The botched case against an Illinois police officer briefly accused of murder in last week’s interstate shooting spree marked at least the third time in six years that a major criminal case in Will County, Il., has collapsed, says the Chicago Tribune. It has led defense attorneys to question whether there are systemic problems in how the county handles high-profile cases. “There were too many indications that they had the wrong guy,” said Bob Odekirk, attorney for Lynwood police officer Brian Dorian, 37. “To go ahead and arrest him and charge him was outrageous.”
Other botched cases include the 2004 murder of 3-year-old Riley Fox, a 2006 hotel credit card fraud investigation that made headlines but was based on false information, and the handling of the 2004 death of police officer Drew Petersson’s ex-wife Kathleen Savio. Now that Dorian has been freed, police sources say they have no suspects or promising leads and may have damaged their chances of finding the mysterious “honeybee gunman,” as the shooter is known.