DuPage pays for handgun arrest
Schaumburg man accepts $50,000
By Ted Gregory
Tribune staff reporter
Published June 3, 2004
DuPage County has settled a federal lawsuit filed by a man whose arrest on weapons charges two years ago became a rallying point for a group advocating the right to carry concealed handguns.
John Horstman, 43, of Schaumburg picked up a check for $50,000 at the DuPage County state's attorney's office Wednesday. DuPage County sheriff's police had arrested Horstman on July 24, 2002, and charged him with aggravated unlawful use of a weapon for carrying a 9 mm handgun in a case in his backpack while bicycling along the Illinois Prairie Path.
DuPage County State's Atty. Joseph Birkett dropped the charges Aug. 8, 2002, saying the evidence failed to warrant the allegations. Horstman, a computer systems engineer whose only previous brush with the law was a speeding ticket, filed suit soon after.
"It's an equitable agreement, and I'm glad it's over and that everybody's wiser for it," Horstman said. Horstman, who lost his job in August 2002 at Argonne National Laboratory for reasons he said were unrelated to the gun charges, is working as a part-time package handler for a shipping service.
"The key is the jeopardy I was put in at the time," Horstman said when asked why he filed the complaint. He spent about 24 hours in DuPage County Jail and was released on a $25,000 cash bond, considered high, before the charges were dropped. "That's quite a lot of jeopardy, especially when I was bending over backward to comply with the law in the first place," he said.
Horstman's arrest became a rallying point for Concealed Carry Inc., an Oak Brook-based group promoting the right of law-abiding citizens to carry weapons. The group, which also advocates the consolidation and clarification of Illinois gun laws, used Horstman's case to draw attention to a clause in the state gun law that allows registered owners to carry an unloaded gun "enclosed in a case, firearm carrying box, shipping box or other container."
"What we're looking at here is the first step of holding state's attorneys responsible for arresting law-abiding gun owners," said John Birch, president of Concealed Carry. "I'm a supporter of Joe Birkett. This is not directed at Joe. This is directed at the process as it exists in the state of Illinois."
DuPage County First Assistant State's Atty. Nancy Wolfe noted Wednesday that the county admits no liability in the out-of-court settlement. Birkett has called for Illinois to clarify its gun laws.
"We resolved the case by settlement for an amount agreed upon by both parties," Wolfe said.
"I'm not going to comment any further on it."
The $50,000 settlement is significantly less than Horstman sought when he filed the complaint in federal court two years ago. He had been seeking more than $1 million for a wrongful arrest.
Horstman's settlement was completed 15 days after a Cook County judge dismissed felony weapons charges against Roderick Pritchett, 26, who, during a routine traffic stop in November 2002, told Chicago police officers he had a registered handgun in a zippered pouch in his car.
