The Chainlink

Bobby Cann Updates: Ryne San Hamel Pleads Guilty, Receives 10 Days in Jail

Jason Jenkins at ActiveTrans is helping to coordinate community response.  If there is any chance you can attend proceedings, please reach out to him: 

jason@activetrans.org.

 

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The defense has indicated they will only accept a sentence of probation - otherwise they will go to trial.

This is possibly the most offensive thing I have read all year.

Ryan Sanhamel's attorney is implying that Ryan is ready to plead guilty but feels prison time is unacceptable. The cognitive dissonance required to acknowledge responsibility for killing another human being while simultaneously stating that you don't deserve meaningful punishment is just astounding.

Just to make sure we're looking at everything:

The Cook County pre-trial team will put together a report on the defendant’s past, including criminal and non-criminal events that will give a bigger picture of who he is and any mitigating or aggravating factors in his past. The other component of the 402 is the ADES (Alcohol and Drug Evaluation Services) evaluation, which will investigate drug and alcohol histories specifically as well as evaluate the degree of his problem with them. This evaluation will help determine what degree of rehabilitation, if any, is included in the sentence.

Looking back to an excerpts from the Reader story of September 30th, 2013:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/cyclist-bobby-cann-bike-safety...


 The year San Hamel graduated from high school, he was arrested twice behind the wheel on alcohol-related charges. Those charges were ultimately dismissed, which is the norm in Illinois for DUI defendants who can afford a private attorney.

On a Friday in January 2003, San Hamel was pulled over shortly after midnight, when a state police sergeant spotted his white Pontiac drifting between lanes on I-294. During the stop, the sergeant discovered open containers of Miller Lite in the car, and arrested the Loyola Academy senior for underage drinking.

In Illinois, it's illegal for drivers under 21 to be on the road with any alcohol in their system. But in this case, San Hamel wasn't charged with DUI. Instead, he was charged with underage drinking, a misdemeanor, and got four months of court supervision for that and other traffic charges, including a citation for illegal transportation of alcohol.

Had San Hamel received an outright conviction for illegal transportation, rather than court supervision, he'd have been hit with a mandatory one-year license suspension—which likely would have prevented his next arrest.
.....
 At 2:22 AM on December 29, 2003, less than a year after San Hamel's prior arrest, a police officer in Lake County spotted him making an unusual turn. After pulling him over in Riverwoods, the officer noted that San Hamel had "glassy and bloodshot eyes," and "a strong smell of alcoholic beverage" on his breath.

San Hamel, then 19, was charged with misdemeanor DUI. He refused to take a Breathalyzer. That's supposed to draw a mandatory six-month license suspension, but San Hamel's suspension was rescinded in a plea deal before the suspension took effect.

The village attorney dropped the misdemeanor DUI charge, and San Hamel paid a $1,886 fine for making an improper turn. As part of the plea bargain, he also attended DUI school and completed one year of court supervision. The improper-turn citation was dropped too.

Ten years later, after San Hamel was charged in the fatal crash after the Cubs-Sox game, private investigators found nothing on his driving record but a red-light ticket from 2010.

Will the pre-trial's report include only the red-light ticket, or will it include all of the rest of the material covered in the Reader's story? 

Sam Adam will argue all of the past information was ended, dropped, expunged or set aside for some other reason.  Is there anything we can do to make sure all of San Hamel's past becomes part of the 402's hearing and consideration?

We need to require ALL drug and alcohol charges be reported to County level courts who would have the option of letting municipal courts handle the charges.  ALL offenses after a first referral to municipal court should be handled by county court.  

For this case, we need to have the judge evaluate what the defendant could have gotten if the county had handle the charges.

Jebus that's shocking and sickening.  Thanks for bringing San Hamel's reprehensible history to light.

"Will the pre-trial's report include only the red-light ticket, or will it include all of the rest of the material covered in the Reader's story?"

Probably won't include any of it. The report is a form document that includes a section for "prior convictions." Looks like he doesn't have any.

That's exactly what we have to fear: he kill somebody but has no prior convictions.  He gets a slap on the wrist, a modest fine, and community service.

I'm pretty sure it's all about the money, mixed in with a fair amount of wealthy white privelege. As I scan news reports for cyclist deaths involving motor vehicles, I occasionally see reports of people who plead guilty to whatever charges were brought against them. (DUI is pretty common.) Most/all that I encounter occurred more recently than Bobby Cann's death. I suspect that in most of those cases the killer has fewer legal resources and/or a better functioning conscience than does SanHamel.

Would it be illegal to casually monitor SanHamel as he goes about his business to see if a) he's driving, b) he's drinking?

If anyone is driving on a public road I don't see why there would anything wrong to observe them.  Can infractions be reported?

His job was to review various bars.  Is he still posting on the web site?  Does he mention how he got there?  Drive, taxi, train, bus, bicycle, etc.?

The website has been gone for a long time (at least a year). As disturbing as that site was, it didn't look well established.

Still a little bit of a connection on Facebook, I think.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/allyoucandrinkCHI/about/?ref=page_internal

The Streetblog story about the hearing next Tuesday:

http://chi.streetsblog.org/2016/12/22/the-driver-who-killed-cyclist...

Summarizing:  The only way this will end on Tuesday is if SanHamel is offered probation (no jail time) as a plea bargain. 

After reading John article from 12/22 go back and read the original Reader story from 10/30/13:

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/cyclist-bobby-cann-bike-safety...

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