Record
Court opinion
1998-03-06
CourtListener (Free Law Project), text of the opinion
Aleman v. Judges of the Circuit Court of Cook County (Aleman v. Toomin), 138 F.3d 302 (7th Cir. 1998)
The Seventh Circuit affirmed the denial of habeas corpus to Harry Aleman, whose 1977 bench-trial acquittal for the 1972 killing of William Logan the state courts held a sham because the judge had been bribed; there was no double jeopardy.
- Date
- 1998-03-06
- Kind
- court-opinion
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Docket
- 138 F.3d 302 (7th Cir. 1998); No. 97-2479
- Rights
- Opinion of a United States court. Works of the federal judiciary are in the public domain in the United States. The text was read on CourtListener.
United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, March 6, 1998. CourtListener captions the case “Aleman v. Toomin”; the appellees were the judges of the Circuit Court of Cook County.
The court states that Cook County Circuit Judge Frank Wilson acquitted Harry Aleman of the 1972 shooting of William Logan at a bench trial on May 24, 1977, and that witnesses Vincent Rizza and Robert Cooley later testified that Aleman paid Wilson a $10,000 bribe. The state courts held that the trial had been a sham, so that Aleman had never been in jeopardy; he was retried, a jury convicted him, and he was sentenced to 100 to 300 years. The Seventh Circuit affirmed the denial of federal habeas relief.
The opinion also recounts witness testimony that Aleman shot and killed Anthony Reitinger in October 1975, allegedly because Reitinger had not paid a “street tax” on his bookmaking to “local organized crime figures,” and says Aleman was first charged with that killing in 1993. The Reitinger account is testimony as the court recites it, not a conviction. The court’s words for the street-tax recipients are “local organized crime figures”; the text read does not use the word Outfit.