Chicago Justice Review: What’s It Really About?

The way this week’s Chicago Justice starts is not the way you predict it will end. The motive isn’t even what you think because the original crime has nothing to do with the victim. It is by horrible happenstance that a city alderman is the victim of a hit-and-run. Neither his politics, nor that of his colleagues, gets him killed. Because of his high rank in the community, the State’s Attorney’s office is asked to investigate. While the motive behind the crime has nothing to do with the alderman, his death does give ADA Stone something to work with to prove a point.

Alderman Christopher Jones is run down in the street. Ironically, his death was a complete accident, despite his anti-environmental politics. Alderman Jones was run down by soccer mom Jane Reynolds. She was told not to stop for any reason because her daughter Emma was kidnapped, and she had to hurry to deliver the ransom. The problem is that Emma was safely at her class trip the entire time. It was all a dangerous ploy by her ex-husband as punishment. Divorce-it’s uglier than murder. The husband worked four jobs to support his wife living in a middle-class lifestyle, and that was after she falsely accused him of abuse.

The way the State’s Attorney’s office sees it, a petty marital squabble got an innocent man killed. That can’t go unpunished. The only way Jefferies will even consider offering Jane Reynolds probation is if they can convict the man who set her up to think her daughter was missing in the first place. It’s a stretch because of the wording. A felony murder charge has to be proven by intimidation, which in turn needs to be triggered by a legitimate threat of physical violence. The claim would be much easier to prove if Stone wasn’t reaching in the wording, and if his soccer mom didn’t come off as a greedy liar. Through his own experience with divorce, Antonio gives Stone an idea. As much as Mr. Reynolds hates his ex-wife, he won’t let her spend time in prison for something he did.

Love and Justice can be blind. Do you think the sentence for this case was just?