Predicting Matt Hale’s Innocence

Well, he’s guilty of some stuff. But it looks like someone other than white supremacist Matt Hale was responsible for the February 28 killing of the husband and mother of United States District Judge Joan Humphry Lefkow.

I’m guessing that this murder of a judge’s family hits a guy like Mike at Crime & Federalism pretty hard. He knows a lot of judges and is, of course, an officer of the court himself. His own trial work has probably angered enough people that he’s been threatened a few times himself. I’m sure the Lefkow family killings left him very angry and—Hale being the obvious suspect—Mike wanted Hale’s blood.

Now, however, Mike is apologizing for us all:

Everyone just knew that Matt Hale was responsible for the murder of Judge Lefkow’s family. We all just knew it. […] We would have convicted him, and justice would have been served.

In cases like these I lose faith in the criminal justice system, and in all of us. How can we so arrogantly be sure of what happened in a home thousands of miles away from us? But we were sure, and we would have extracted our pound of flesh.

Speak for yourself, Mike. Ever since I heard about this I’ve been pretty sure Hale wasn’t involved in the Lefkow family killings. My thinking went like this:

1. One of the things that made Matt Hale the central suspect in this is that back in 2002 he tried to have Judge Lefkow killed. However, that case isn’t quite out of the court system. Next month, U.S. District Judge James Moody will be sentencing Hale for soliciting the murder. The attack on Lefkow’s family (unsolved at the time) probably destroyed any remaining chance that Hale would get a light sentence. Judge Moody isn’t supposed to take notice of the killings because nothing about them has been proven in court, but do you really think he can pull that off? More to the point, would a white supremacist like Matt Hale think he would even try?
2. One response to the above argument is that perhaps Hale was hoping the Lefkow killings would intimidate Judge Moody into a lighter sentence. But if Hale was trying to intimidate Moody with violence, why didn’t he intimidate Moody with violence? Surely he would have wanted to make the threat a little more personal?
3. Matt Hale, aka prisoner 15177424, is locked in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago. It’s pretty hard to order a killing from prison. It’s possible that gangsters—of either the Tony Soprano or Avon Barksdale varieties—can order a hit from inside a prison cell because their gang provides the organization, planning, and resources. Most other types of prisoners, Hale included, would have a lot of trouble arranging a hit from behind bars.
4. Ordering a hit on a federal judge would be even harder. It brings an awful lot of heat, so it’s hard to find someone willing to do it.
5. Don’t forget that Matt Hale wasn’t even able to order a hit on Judge Lefkow from outside of prison. That’s how he got sent there in the first place: He tried to hire a guy to kill Judge Lefkow, and it turned out the guy was a federal informant. Hale wouldn’t have had to do that if he knew anyone who would kill a judge for him.

I was thinking along these lines when the Lefkow family killing story first broke, and the resulting developments have proven me right. Of course, I can’t prove I predicted this because I didn’t mention it to anyone. Now I sound like some TV psychic who claims to have predicted the latest piece of big news even though nobody can find any mention of it before it happened. If I’d thought to blog about it, I would now be hailed as a genius. Blogging about it after the fact however…not so much.

So now I’ve resolved to start blogging these kinds of things. That’s why I’m starting a new feature here at WindyPundit: The Prognostication Department. Next time I think I know what’s going on in a situation like this, I’ll go on the record about it. That way if subsequent events prove me right or wrong, there’s nothing I can do to fake it.