The sentencing listening to for the convicted Highland Park Fourth of July parade shooter is ready to start Wednesday, wrapping up a years-long courtroom case for one of many worst mass shootings in state historical past.
Robert Crimo III will possible get life in jail for killing seven folks and wounding 4 dozen on July 4, 2022.
However it’s unclear whether or not he’ll present up in courtroom since a lot of the listening to may take up hours of survivors’ victim-impact statements. Prosecutors haven’t mentioned what number of victims are set to speak in courtroom. If sufficient do, the listening to may stretch right into a second day.
“The sentencing listening to will likely be lengthy and quite wrenching,” mentioned Doug Godfrey, a professor of authorized writing and analysis at Chicago-Kent School of Regulation.
Crimo skipped most of jury choice earlier than calling off the trial on its first day — as an alternative pleading guilty to all 69 counts of homicide and tried homicide. Decide Victoria Rossetti has mentioned she is going to sentence him whether or not or not he exhibits up.
There’s little query that Rossetti will hand down something aside from a pure life sentence. State regulation requires a compulsory pure life sentence upon conviction of two homicide counts. Crimo pleaded responsible to 21 counts of homicide on March 3.
However Rossetti has the selection to use the sentences concurrently — or one after one other.
That second kind of sentencing typically indicators a choose’s harsher condemnation of the defendant, in line with Jesse Cheng, assistant professor of regulation at DePaul College School of Regulation. That kind of “consecutive” sentencing can be tougher to reverse sooner or later.
“Due to this, the potential for commutation by the governor down the road will possible be harder to attain in circumstances that contain consecutive sentences,” Cheng mentioned in an e-mail.
Crimo’s attorneys might also current “mitigating” proof to hunt a much less extreme sentence, Cheng mentioned.
The listening to will possible be Crimo’s final likelihood to talk publicly concerning the assault. Defendants sometimes converse at their sentencing hearings. Defendants generally apologize earlier than the choose, or take accountability for his or her actions, to present a choose a motive to decrease the potential jail sentence.
However that appears unlikely for Crimo, who as soon as claimed in a leaked jail video that the parade taking pictures was staged by the FBI. The closest he got here to confessing a motive was throughout his recorded police interrogation, hours after the taking pictures, when he informed a detective he that he carried out the attack to “wake people up.”
“A curious a part of sentencing is that nobody will get the reply to the query all of us have requested: Why did he do it?” Godfrey mentioned. “He received’t say and I doubt he’ll take accountability or apologize. So, as to the elemental query, we won’t know.”
