Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • Page 2-1

123456 SECTION 2 TUESDAY NEARNORTHWEST Tribune photo by Jim Prisching Flyover for a friend Friends and family of George Priester, 98, who died Thursday, watch a missing-man formation flown for him Monday at Palwaukee Airport, which he owned for 34 years. By Dan Gibbard Tribune staff reporter PLEASANT PRAIRIE, Wis. A procession of tanks and armored treads clanking and gun barrels pointed at the has staged an orderly withdrawal from Wisconsin this month after their commander negotiated a cease-fire in a years-long court battle. The Kenosha Military Museum, which was actually in Pleasant Prairie, was condemned by eminent domain several years ago to make way for development along Interstate Highway 94. Last spring an arbitrator awarded owner Mark Sonday of Antioch a $3.9 million settlement, leaving him the daunting task of moving more than 200 vehicles, some weighing 20 tons or more.

must Sonday said Friday, taking a break as his son towed an M-42 anti-aircraft tank down the access road to its new home in Illinois. The nonprofit museum, which has re- mained open during the move, will probably close by the end of the week. But in losing the battle, Sonday and his wife and partner, Joyce, may have won the Tribune photos by George Thompson Vietnam veteran Bob Pluskota, 67, checks out an M110 howitzer at the Kenosha Military Museum just before some of the pieces were moved. The museum was forced out by development, but a settlement of $3.9 million is paying for a new location in Illinois. Idled war gear goes on the march again WIS.

ILL. 294 88 43 90 90 94 94 94 Chicago Tribune Russell Rockford 20 MILES Chicago Milwaukee Madison Pleasant Prairie Kenosha Wisconsin museum relocating to Illinois PLEASE SEE MUSEUM, PAGE4 By Michael Hawthorne Tribune staff reporter A second major Illinois utility agreed Monday to substantially cut mercury pollution, increasing pressure on anoth- er company that owns five coal-fired power plants in the Chicago area to comply with the stringent new standards. The deal between Houston- based Dynegy and Gov. Rod administration also calls for reduced smokestack exhaust, which creates smog and that contribute to asthma, lung disease and heart failure. State officials and utility executives said installing new equipment at five Illinois coal plants could make them among the cleanest in the nation.

The effects will be seen hundreds of miles away in Chicago and beyond, in the Northeast, where the pollution contributes to chronically dirty air. The Blagojevich administration hammered out the agreement two weeks after brokering a similar deal with Ameren, another Illinois utility. Both arrangements were prompted by tough mercury regulations that the governor proposed this spring, in response to a Tribune series about the toxic metal. PLEASE SEE MERCURY, PAGE4 TRIBUNE UPDATE Utility OKs mercury cuts Another company still negotiating Find the special report on the mercury menace at chicagotribune.com/mercury By Jason Meisner and Tonya Maxwell Tribune staff reporters Chicago police said Monday that as three officers crowded into a crampedkitchen Sunday to arrest a West Side man, hecalled to his dog waiting outside the back door. Phillip Keys, 19, ordered the dog to attack the officers during the incident, police said.

Snowball, white pit bull, obeyed. grabbed said Joanna Bland, 20, who lives with Keys and is the mother of his two children. was bruised and scratched Bland said, adding that Snowball let go and appeared intent on biting again. when they pulled the gun out and shot her in the Bland said. Keys then was taken into custody.

On Monday, he was ordered held on $125,000 bailon three counts of aggravated assault to a police officer and one count each of aggravated battery to a police officer and aggravated domestic battery. The incident occurred at homein the 900 block of North Homan Avenue, in the Humboldt Park neighborhood, Officer Kelly Liakopoulos said. A Harrison Area detective and two district officers had gone to the home at about 12:30 p.m. to arrest Keys, Liakopoulos said. Cops say man told dog to attack Pit bull fatally shot in Humboldt Park Keys PLEASE SEE DOG, PAGE4 By Jamie Francisco Tribune staff reporter In preparation for 1,000 pupils expected to start classes Tuesday at the Barrington Middle School Station Campus, Principal Craig Winkelman has juggled schedules, squeezed teachers out of office space and overseen remodeling projects.

our overcrowding, the number of classrooms we have to use is at Winkelman said during a recent tour of the campus. percent room use is less than ideal in trying to run a Undeterred by a failed March referendum to expand its middle schools, the Barrington Community Unit School District 220 board will hold a special meeting Tuesday night to determine how much it will request in building funds and a tax increase at the polls in November. we get something passed in the next cycle, going to have some difficult decisions as a board to make to District 200 plans next ballot appeal PLEASE SEE CROWDED, PAGE4 a cause that should be easy for me to champion. Alstory Simon, convicted of shooting to death a young couple in 1982, is asking a Cook County judge to reopen his case in part because he says his defense attorney had a serious conflict of interest. That attorney, Jack Rimland, was close with some investigators and advocates who gathered the evidence that put Simon away.

Simon initially got number from the private investigator who took videotaped confession, a confession Simon now says was bogus. Rimland and the investigator share office space in the Loop. And even after he had been retained by Simon, in his capacity as president of the Illinois Attorneys for Criminal an award honoring those whose efforts had put his client behind bars. In short, Simon says, the reason Rimland fight to get the confession thrown out of court was that the reputations of associates depended on Simon pleading guilty to the murders, which he did. an easy cause to get behind because the appearance of conflict is strong.

A person accused of a crime is entitled to an attorney whose independence is unquestioned and whose loyalties are undiluted. When that happen, it taints the integrity of the legal process and requires a thorough second look. But difficult for me to back effort, largely due to my own conflicts of interest: factual guilt in the slayings is a key assumption in many of the commentaries written about capital punishment in the last seven years. It was confession in 1999 that led almost immediately to the high-profile exoneration of Anthony Porter, who had been sent to Death Row after being convicted in those slayings. And his exoneration played a big role in death penalty reforms in Illinois, the mass commutation of condemned prisoners and the moratorium on executions that continues today.

I believe that those behind the effort to free Anthony Porter are on the side of justice. They include Northwestern University professor David Protess, who led the investigation of the case, and investigator Paul Ciolino, who persuaded Simon to confess. I believe that those behind the effort to re-open case are interested only in discrediting the integrity of those whose work has attacked the criminal justice system. They include new lawyers: James Sotos, who otherwise specializes in representing cities, counties and law enforcement officials in cases where citizens file suit alleging violations of their civil rights, and Terry Ekl, a former prosecutor who once was DuPage County Atty. Joe campaign manager.

Perhaps, therefore, I strongly doubt claim that he pleaded guilty and repeatedly confessed to a crime he commit because he was hoodwinked by promises of book and movie deals and a token two-year sentence. I believe that the 37-year sentence Rimland negotiated for the two killings shows he did an excellent job, and I believe that ongoing refusal to release Rimland from the bonds of attorney-client privilege destroys his claims of innocence. But if learned anything in more than a dozen years of banging my shoe on the table about the fallibilities of our legal system, that beliefs and conflicts of interest can be poisonous to the search for truth, no matter how good intentions. And that the first step toward injustice always involves people abandoning principle when it threatens to conflict with what they to be true. Here, principle demands that Alsto- ry Simon be awarded a do-over on the issue of his legal representation when the issue next comes before a judge at the end of the month.

No matter how well Jack Rimland may have represented Simon in orchestrating his plea bargain, and no matter how strongly my usual allies in the crusading community insist that Simon got a fair shake, conflicting roles are too troubling to dismiss as irrelevant. You know my bias here. But confident that a full evidentiary hearing will not only vindicate Rimland, it will also expose fully the cynical opportunism animating appeal. And that cause is easy to champion. Comments: chicagotribune.com/zorn Full disclosure: Cause is a hard one to support Eric Zorn.