Breaking News! Chicago DUI Attorney Comments on Chicago Police Officer’s DUI Sentence

This Chicago DUI attorney posted here and here about Chicago Police Officer’s Anthony Bolling’s Chicago DUI.  It involved the death of a boy who was riding his bicycle.

Today Officer Bolling was sentenced before Judge Matthew Coughlin.

From the Chicago Tribune:

A Cook County judge today sentenced Chicago police Officer Richard Bolling to 3 years in prison for killing a 13-year-old boy in an off-duty DUI crash and fleeing the scene.

Bolling, 43, had tears in his eyes as Judge Matthew Coghlan announced his decision.

Last January a Criminal Court jury found Bolling, a 17-year veteran narcotics officer, guilty of aggravated DUI, reckless homicide, and leaving the scene of a fatal accident.

Coghlan also ordered that after his release from prison Bolling talk to recruits at the Chicago Police Academy about “how to properly handle an investigation into one of their own.”

Prosecutors argued at trial that Bolling received preferential treatment from police the night in May 2009 that he struck and killed Trenton Booker at 81st Street and Ashland Avenue with his Dodge Charger.

One of the two officers who stopped him testified that she was ordered to "hold off" on field-sobriety tests by her watch commander. Those tests weren’t administered until two hours after the crash – but not before Bolling was allowed to use a washroom at a nearby gas station.

At the time, both arresting officers said Bolling passed the sobriety tests, but at the trial each changed their opinion, testifying that he had flunked key parts of the tests. One officer said she was "nervous" when she administered the tests because of all the superior officers at the scene.

It wasn't until 4 1/2 hours after the crash that Bolling, on orders of an internal affairs sergeant, took a blood-alcohol breath test. He registered just below the legal limit of 0.08 percent, but an Illinois State Police forensic toxicologist estimated Bolling's blood-alcohol content at the time of crash was as much as twice the legal limit.

 It looks like the professional courtesy Officer Bolling received was not enough to convince a jury to find him guilty.