Opening statements in Highland Park mass shooting trial set for Monday
Prosecutors are set to deliver opening statements in the trial of the alleged Highland Park parade shooter Monday morning and begin to lay out the case that Robert Crimo III committed one of the worst mass shootings in Illinois history.
The Lake County state's attorney's office has said it has collected thousands of pages of documents and photos — and a recorded confession — tying Crimo to the attack on July 4, 2022. Prosecutors say Crimo climbed onto a rooftop and fired on the suburb's July 4 parade, killing seven people and wounding 48 others.
He now faces a combined 69 counts of murder and attempted murder after prosecutors without explanation last week dropped 48 counts of aggravated battery. Crimo faces a mandatory life sentence if convicted of two murder counts.
Most surviving victims plan to testify at the trial that Lake County Judge Victoria Rossetti said could last three and five weeks. Many of the 80-some people questioned to be jurors said they could not commit that amount of time — or give Crimo a fair shot.
One of the six women and six men impaneled on the jury said they initially thought Crimo was guilty based on early news accounts of his arrest.
“Of course, I formed an opinion. We all assumed he was guilty," one juror said.
Still, they said they could set those feelings aside and judge Crimo solely on the evidence presented at trial. Six alternate jurors were also chosen.
Lake County State's Attorney Eric Rinehart, who did some of the questioning during jury selection, has not released a complete witness list for the trial. But prosecutors have disclosed in pretrial filings there will be several dozen witnesses called, including surviving victims, police officers, detectives and experts.
Crimo's defense attorneys have not indicated a strategy. His lawyers failed in their attempt to exclude hours of Crimo's videotaped police interview, arguing he wasn't given access to an attorney who had come to speak with him.
Crimo showed up for less than half of the jury selection last week. He appeared for the first half of Monday and Tuesday but did not show up at all on Wednesday. The hearings were sparsely attended; reporters made up most of the courtroom gallery.
Crimo has acted unpredictably in the nearly three years his case has progressed through the Lake County Courthouse in Waukegan, making it hard to anticipate what might happen at trial. He dismissed his court-appointed attorneys, only to take them back weeks later. He agreed to plead guilty but reversed course in a dramatic courtroom scene that angered victims. And he lost most of his phone privileges in jail after leaking a video in which he claimed the FBI staged the attack.
Rossetti has ruled that survivors of the attack will be allowed to watch any part of the trial, even though many of them plan to testify. Prosecutors have said victims will not identify Crimo as the suspect and only recount their experiences and how they were wounded.