Wednesday, May 21, 1997

Andy just wanted to go see the judge

By Bob Greene

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - The most touching moment during the hearings to recommend whether Illinois Supreme Court Justice James D. Heiple should be impeached was one that took place in utter silence, with few people noticing.

As Heiple testified for six hours before the committee of the General Assembly, a young man sat in the middle of the spectator section, watching and listening intently.

The young man - a 17-year-old high school student named Andy Findley - had come to the state Capitol on this day because at last he was getting the chance to look at Heiple.

When Andy was 10, a decision written by Heiple for an appellate panel ordered the 2-year-old boy Andy knew as his younger brother - the boy his family was going to adopt - from his home. This was the boy who was known as Joe - the child whom the Heiple-written order took away from a safe, loving home, and gave to a convicted felon and his wife, two people who were not related to the boy in any way. Since that day, Joe's life has been an unending continuum of anguish, obscene in its cruelty and devastation.

Heiple's order - as in the order he wrote for the Illinois Supreme Court that took the child known as Richard from his home - allowed no lower court to look into where Joe was being sent. Andy Findley has never again seen Joe; according to Andy's father, "For the next year, Andy cried himself to sleep every night. He had lost his little brother. He wouldn't talk much to us about it. But he would go to bed, and we would stand outside his door and we would hear him sobbing.

"Sometimes Andy would say to us, 'I want to talk to the judge.' He was just 10 - but he wanted to go see the judge and ask the judge where (Joe) was and why (Joe) couldn't come back. He was still young enough to think that if the judge understood the pain he had caused, then things could be all right again.

"We were just at a loss. You try to raise your child to be a good person. You teach him to go to church, to play by the rules, to respect authority and trust in goodness and right. And then a court comes along and takes your child's brother away on 24 hours' notice, and gives that little boy to a convicted felon who's no relation to him, and you hear your remaining son crying in his bed every night, and you know that nothing you have tried to teach him matters, that everything you believe in is gone."

And now, here Andy Findley was. "He wanted to go see the judge." At last he was getting his chance. Heiple sat there under oath and answered the committee's questions; when the hearings finally ended and the committee chose not to recommend impeachment, its disgust at the idea of Heiple sitting on the bench was apparent.

Rep. Lovana Jones of Chicago: "He has brought shame on the court, shame on himself, and shame on everybody who cares about the judiciary. Judge Heiple, if there is any ounce of decency left in you, for the good of the people of the state of Illinois and for your constituents, please step down and resign." Rep. Arline Fantin of Calumet City: "I may not be able to recommend that Justice Heiple be impeached, but I want to send a clear message to Justice Heiple that his tenure on the Illinois Supreme Court should come to an end. I believe he should voluntarily resign from the court." Rep. Verna Clayton of Buffalo Grove: "Because of my great concerns, I am requesting the Judicial Inquiry Board and the Courts Commission investigate the issues that they haven't already investigated and render appropriate punishment."

Those issues have nothing to do with the cases of Joe and Richard. Only Heiple wanted the committee and the public to believe that; only Heiple tried to use the pain of those two children to save his own skin. But as long as he chose to bring those two poor children into his hearing, he ought to know Joe's older brother was there, watching. Looking at Heiple.

Andy Findley looked at Heiple as a person might look at an insect. As Heiple scrambled to try to explain away his various ethical lapses and affronts to the judiciary, Andy Findley watched and it was clear that in his eyes - as in the eyes of so many citizens - Heiple is no longer a judge. He has the title, he wears the robes, he draws the salary. He has the power to punish. But a judge? A representative of fairness and justice? He has already been removed, by so many of the people he is supposed to serve.

It was a warm spring day outside the hearing room. Andy Findley, a varsity tennis player at his high school, had a match that afternoon. He got up to leave all this, and walked away from the room, walked into the clean, bright Illinois afternoon. He walked away from Heiple, knowing that from now on, Heiple no longer counts.

Chicago Tribune