Blake Horwitz

“The McHenry County State’s Attorney maintains a strict policy whereby it will not prosecute or investigate Sheriff Nygren for any reason whatsoever,” jumps out from the first page of the motion to reconsider Judge Thomas Meyer’s denial of former Deputy Sheriff Zane Seipler’s third amended petition to appoint a special prosecutor.

“The McHenry County State’s Attorney views its relationship with the Sheriff as an attorney-client relationship…and for these reasons the MCSA is not an available entity to prosecute or investigate the Sheriff,” the motion continues.

Seipler attorney Blake Horwitz points to the cost savings to taxpayers of having in-house counsel for the Sheriff’s Department, that ‘there would be a large and meaningful increase to taxpayers,” if Bianchi were to withdraw from representing the Sheriff on civil cases.

So, the argument put before the Court goes, if the State’s Attorney refused to take a look a potential criminal wrong doing in the Sheriff’s Department, then “it is not available to do so.”

Nygren’s representative in court, Donald Leist, argued that the State’s Attorney’s Office “is able to prosecute the Sheriff, but simply chooses not to in this instance.”

Horwitz states,

“This position is inaccurate. The MCSA (McHenry County State’s Attorney) is not willing to and/or available to investigate or prosecute Sheriff Nygren.”

Based on that unavailability, Horwitz asks that a special prosecutor be appointed.