Andrew Stuckart admits he doesn’t have the name recognition of his opponent in next week’s Republican primary for Warren County State’s Attorney, but he thinks he has one edge over Tom Siegel.
Stuckart says you don’t truly know how much goes into being a prosecutor until you have done it.
He holds up two particular cases; securing convictions for one the area’s top meth dealers and the man who murdered 26-year-old Jenni McGruder outside the Seminary Street Pub.
Stuckart says Janeen Barry was bringing about 2 kilograms of meth into the area every week at the time of her arrest.
He also believes there is an advantage to him not being a native of this area.
“A State’s Attorney may be so well known or involved with different members of the community it becomes difficult for them to do their job effectively because you start weighing ‘well what is the appropriate disposition in this case’ versus ‘well I know this person and I don’t want to do anything that would bother them or someone else I know,” Stuckart says.
Stuckart hails from Lake County in the Chicago area, getting a Bachelor’s at Northern Illinois University in history with a psychology minor before graduating John Marshall Law School.
Stuckart came to the area about three years ago to be an Assistant State’s Attorney in Knox County before moving over to Warren County last summer.
From his prosecutorial experience, Stuckart considers meth to be the number one law enforcement issue in the area.
Stuckart says he would push for information sharing between law enforcement agencies and the State’s Attorney’s office.
I may not know that this person I have in custody is a potential big target in another county so with that information sharing I think we can build stronger cases in these more organized dealings and securing longer sentences,” Stuckart says.
He says what’s often the case is meth users become small-time dealers to fund their habit.
Stuckart says a state’s attorneys needs to make distinctions between those scenarios.
Stuckart agrees with his opponent, Siegel, that abolishing Illinois’ cash-bail system is a bad idea.
He understands that it can be applied in a way that’s discriminatory to certain groups, but the alternative is judges tending to either detain nearly every defendant or practically no one.
Voters in Warren County will choose between Siegel and Stuckart in the primary next Tuesday.
