Mother is charged with nine counts of domestic battery for causing bodily harm. DCFS investigates. Lawyer defends her at trial. Jury votes not guilty as to all nine counts.

 

Attorney Lewis Gainor represented a woman in her mid-forties who was charged with nine counts of domestic battery causing bodily harm. She was a single mother of three. Police officers from the Waukegan Police Department had arrested her on October 18, 2005, because her youngest two girls had shown up for school with bloody injuries.

 

The school investigated the injuries, and interviewed the two girls. They told the police that their mother had hit them with a switch the night before. Photographs were taken. Statements were recorded. Illinois criminal charges of domestic battery were filed.

Lewis Gainor appeared as defense counsel for the woman beginning in 2005. The prosecution and defense litigated the case for several months. The prosecution requested the woman to have her children testify against her. The court ordered her to do so, as well.

 

The People of the State of Illinois made an offer for plea bargain of six months incarceration. The prosecution would not offer anything less than six months locked up. If the woman were to accept the offer, the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) would take her children from her. Lewis Gainor looked at his client in court and told her he would defend her at trial.

 

The jury trial lasted several days, beginning at the start of April 2006. The children testified against their mother. Police officers testified as to the injuries and photographs.

 

Lewis Gainor stood before the jury of 12 on April 4, 2006 and made his closing argument. The issue is, he said, that a mother has a God-given right to discipline her children. The jury, made up of mothers and fathers, deliberated for more than two hours.

 

At 2:35 p.m., the jury returned to the courtroom with their verdict. The foreperson handed the verdict forms to the clerk, and the clerk read the verdict.

 

"We find the defendant not guilty as to all charges."

 

Lewis Gainor walked his client out of the courtroom after the verdict, to reunite the mother with her two daughters.

 

It was a beautiful moment when the family was united outside of the courtroom. The girls and their mother hugged and cried." - Lewis Gainor

 

DCFS closed the file on that family. They are still together today.