February 22, 2024 / By mobanmarket
JOLIET, IL — A native of Plainfield, the Will County Courthouse’s most high-profile judge, Dave Carlson, will be stepping down as a Will County Circuit Court judge in the coming weeks, Joliet Patch confirmed.
Carlson has been on the bench since 2013 when he became an associate judge.
In 2014, Carlson was elected as a circuit judge, and he was retained by the voters of Will County in 2020. Carlson is a Republican. His decision to resign from the bench was made known to Will County Chief Judge Dan Kennedy on Wednesday.
Carlson, who turns 53 this spring, plans to stay on the bench until around the end of April. He will be leaving the bench in order to work for a Chicago law firm that has a presence in Joliet and Will County. Carlson will work as a personal injury attorney for the firm and have his office in Joliet.
Carlson’s current term of office was set to expire in 2026.
Several of Carlson’s most prominent murder cases will be handled by a yet to be named judge who will take over the daily call for Courtroom 405. One of the most noteworthy cases involves the post-conviction appeal process for 70-year-old ex-Bolingbrook police sergeant, Drew Peterson, who was convicted of the 2004 murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio.
Carlson is still expected to handle the March 6 court hearing for Peterson in which the judge will learn the results of a mental competency examination that was recently ordered for Peterson, who remains in the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections.
Peterson is trying to overturn his murder conviction on the grounds that he had ineffective assistance from his private counsel, Joel Brodsky, during his 2012 jury trial at the old Will County Courthouse in front of now-retired Will County Judge Ed Burmila.
In his role of overseeing a large share of Will County’s first-degree murder cases, Carlson often handed down some of the harshest prison terms to killers appearing in Courtroom 405 at the Will County Courthouse.
Last year, Carlson sentenced Robert Watson, the downtown Joliet transient who fatally stabbed Wisconsin 76-year-old sports bar owner, Sam Burgarino, in March 2019, inside the Harrah’s Casino Hotel, to 100 years at the Illinois Department of Corrections without any day for day good time credit.
And in November, Judge Carlson issued a life in prison sentence for Jermaine Mandley, the Joliet murderer who killed Maya Smith inside her car as it was parked in a Clement Street alley, in January 2023, while Maya Smith’s young daughter sat in the backseat of the car.
Mandley shot his girlfriend in the face at least seven times. He was later captured by Joliet police and a fugitive task force near the Horseshoe Casino property in Hammond, Indiana.
One murder case that Carlson won’t handle moving forward surrounds the second murder trial for former Joliet Outlaw Jeremy Boshears. On Jan. 24, Judge Carlson announced that he was ordering a new trial for Boshears, overturning Boshears’ first-degree murder conviction for the November 2017 disappearance and slaying of Woody’s bartender Katie Kearns.
Her body was discovered about an hour south of Joliet in Kankakee County inside her Jeep that was hidden inside a pole barn belonging to the retired president of the Joliet Outlaws.
The Will County State’s Attorney’s Office convinced the jury in May 2022 that Boshears was responsible for shooting Kearns in the head inside the Joliet Outlaws clubhouse and driving her body inside her Jeep Wrangler to rural St. Anne and then getting a ride back to his home in Coal City where he lived with his wife and family.
Boshears testified in his own defense at the 2022 trial in Carlson’s courtroom that he watched helplessly as Kearns grabbed a gun from behind the little bar inside the clubhouse and put the gun to her head and shot herself.
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