Wells' trial put on hold
PRINCETON — The date trial for the lawsuit filed against Bureau County by the Austin Wells family has been postponed until next summer.
In his June 11 order, Magistrate Judge John A. Gorman said discovery shall be completed by Feb. 19, 2010, and all dispositive motions are to be filed by March 19, 2010. The final pretrial conference is set for June 25, 2010. The case is set to go before a jury at 8:30 a.m. July 26, 2010, before Judge Michael M. Mihm. The trial had previously been set for January 2010.
The wrongful death and civil rights lawsuit, which was filed in June 2008, stems from the June 2007 death of Austin L. Wells, a 17-year-old Dover boy, who died while an inmate in the Bureau County Jail. Wells was found hanging from a bed sheet in his cell on June 9, 2007. Bureau County Coroner Janice Wamhoff determined Wells had been dead for seven or eight hours when he was found by jail staff. A coroner’s jury determined Wells’ death to be suicide.
The plaintiffs in the case are the estate of Austin Wells and Wells’ parents, Jerry Wells of Princeton and Mindy Davis of Davenport. They are represented by Chicago attorneys Janine Hoft and Jan Susler.
The defendants are Bureau County, Bureau County Sheriff John Thompson and corrections officers Sherry Keefer and Chris Spiegel. They are represented by Northbrook attorneys Clifford Kosoff, George Casson and Elisha Rosenblum.
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