FRANKLIN CO., Ill.—One of last year’s big stories out of Franklin County has made the popular website, FreeThoughtProject.
Bill McKinney
FTP specializes in many of the outrages that occur throughout the country as they pertain to cops—bad cops, specifically. And this piece that appears on yesterday’s offering at FTP is just that. See this excerpt:
Roy Barnhart’s killer, former police officer Bill McKinney, was sentenced to 18 months of house arrest with jail on the weekends after agreeing to a plead deal for beating Barnhart to death while handcuffed.
The incident took place in July of 2013, officers responded to a call of a fight. When McKinney and two other officers arrived on the scene, there was no fight, simply a verbal dispute between Barnhart and his neighbor about a boat title, according to investigators.
The cops, in their report, alleged Barnhart assaulted one of the officers, according to the Franklin County State Attorney
Barnhart’s wife Sue claims that nothing violent happened until officers involved themselves in the incident and attempted to “restore order.”
Barnhart ex-wife, Louise Lantham, said that upon the officers arrival, Barnhart requested that the officers leave, as they weren’t needed. She says this was the basis of a heated argument between Barnhart and McKinney.
You can either read the rest of the coverage at this link at FTP, or you can read our coverage from last summer. Either way, it’s a horrible situation, and it’s exacerbated by the fact that there was only SORT OF a punishment issued:
Three days after the beating Barnhart succumbed to his injuries and passed away, leaving behind a wife, children and grandchildren.
In a rare move McKinney was arrested and charged with involuntary manslaughter, aggravated battery of a senior citizen, and official misconduct, according to WPSD 6. But rather than hold McKinney accountable for the death he caused, by beating a suspect to death while handcuffed, the prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty to only the official misconduct charge and dropped the other two charges.
McKinney was sentenced to just 18 months, but only weekends need to be served in lockup, the rest of the time he will be allowed the comfort of house arrest in his own home.
The special treatment this officer has received under the terms of this plea shows that officers are rarely held accountable. Even after the most heinous crime of killing a defenseless man that posed no threat to him, he still receives a slap on the wrist.
While we appreciate FTP and the coverage they give to the ever-increasing police state encroaching upon Illinois, they can’t possibly know that Franklin County is probably the seat of corruption in southern Illinois (outside, of course, of the Metro-East area). The very county itself is such a stronghold of utter corruption that few were surprised that McKinney got his slap on the wrist, and even fewer were surprised that it took as long as it did for McKinney to enter his watered-down plea November 6 (the fact that Bryan Drew was his defense attorney notwithstanding, Drew and his ex-wife Melissa being among those who foment the corruption). It’s not unusual for the plea to the lesser charge to be entered in any multi-felony case…but it’s also not unusual, in police state Illinois, for cops to get away with what McKinney did without just recompense; it’s particularly not unusual in corruption-laden Franklin, where a woman merely trying to keep her young child from what she believes was child molestation was charged and the alleged molester, with findings by DCFS, was let go with no recrimination.
If FTP wants some horrific tales of police misconduct, they have no further to look than southern Illinois, something we’ve been covering for years. They might want to tread carefully when in Franklin, however. We do.