Court of Last Resort
What a lucky man! When Justice James Heiple of the Illinois Supreme Court wrote the unanimous opinion ordering the return of “baby Richard” to his biological parents, the occasion limited him to a discussion of the case. The petition for a rehearing gave Heiple the chance last week to let go at his enemies. Especially Bob Greene:
“In support of his objective, Greene brings to bear the tools of the demagogue, namely, incomplete information, falsity, half-truths, character assassination and spurious argumentation. He has conducted a steady assault on my abilities as a judge, headlining one of his columns ‘The Sloppiness of Justice Heiple.’ Another was entitled ‘Supreme Injustice for a Little Boy.’ He has shown my picture in his columns with bylines reading, respectively, ‘Justice Heiple: Ruling takes boy from home,’ and ‘James D. Heiple: No justice for a child.’
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“Both the Governor and the members of the General Assembly who supported this bill might be well advised to return to the classroom and take up Civics 101. The Governor, for his part, has no understanding of this case and no interest either public or private in its outcome. The legislature is not given the authority to decide private disputes between litigants. Neither does it sit as a super court to review unpopular decisions of the Supreme Court. We have three branches of government in this land. They are designated as the legislative, the executive and the judicial. Legislative adjudication of private disputes went by the wayside generations ago. Moreover, this case cannot be decided by public clamor generated by an irresponsible journalist.”
(2) Greene accused Heiple of misrepresenting the litigation when he said the adoptive parents had themselves to blame for prolonging it through appeals. In truth, Greene noted, the biological parents appealed, and the adoptive parents prevailed at every turn until the supreme court ruled against them.
But this time Heiple did not single out a reporter. Earlier in the year Tribune columnist Eric Zorn wrote a month’s worth of columns championing Cruz and Hernandez. And when he spotted Bob Greene’s column last month on “the sloppiness of Judge Heiple,” Zorn reflected in a column of his own that he could have written on the subject himself.
But he saved it with a team of managers who ran the company in traditional top-down style. And the Hollinger newspaper chain, whose American Publishing Company subsidiary bought the Sun-Times Company last March, quickly decided it was top-heavy. Hollinger president David Radler and APC president Larry Perrotto don’t care much about corporate structures, lines of authority, or even what McKeel would consider good manners. They came in to cut costs and boost circulation, and damn titles or protocol. Perhaps they didn’t realize how intrusive McKeel found them.
