Soft on predators platform for Illinois Governor candidate?
Friday, 05 June 2009
DuPage County prosecutor Joe Birkett wants to be the next Governor of Illinois, but he's got a strange way of showing it.
Birkett, who was elected State's Attorney in 1996, took time out from the campaign trail to offer a stunning sweetheart sentence to a Naperville, Illinois man arrested with hundreds of thousands of movies and photos of children being sexually assaulted and displayed.
The Naperville Daily Herald reports that Schmitz pled guilty and agreed to a plea bargain offer of 30 months probation. "Prosecutors will seek at least six months of jail at his sentencing," says the paper.
A 2008 press release said the Schmitz investigation involved the Naperville Police Department, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and one of Illinois' two Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces. The ICAC is headed by Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who is widely-rumored to be a likely opponent to Birkett in the 2010 Governor's race.
