“He’s Unrepresented,” the Prosecutor Told the Court. Then the State Faulted Him for Not Showing Up.

One morning in a Waukegan courtroom is now doing two separate jobs for the State, and the transcript of it contains the sentence that undoes both.

What the prosecutor said

At PageID 657 of the transcript the State itself filed in federal court, the assistant state’s attorney tells the court: “The defendant is not present. He’s unrepresented. He filed a post conviction petition at this point.” The court responds: “He failed to appear, so I am going to strike his pleading. Take it off the call, if he wishes to resurrect it that’s up to him.”

Job one: the federal brief

Five months later that morning becomes the State’s answer to a habeas petition. Dkt. 51 calls it “a dismissal for want of prosecution,” computes a March 10, 2027 reinstatement deadline from that label, and tells a district judge that an available state remedy therefore remains. The label is the load-bearing word. The transcript does not contain it. The certified case summary the State also filed records the event as “Status” and the result as “Case Called.”

Job two: the revocation petition

The same date appears on the State’s petition to revoke probation, among the dates he is alleged to have failed to report. So March 10 is simultaneously the day his post-conviction case was disposed of and the day he committed a violation — one hearing, two adverse uses, and the record of it says he had no lawyer.

What the declaration adds, with its source named

On February 19, 2026 at approximately 3:00 p.m. he received a call from a newly assigned probation officer whose name and direct contact information, he states, were not clearly established during the call. He states the officer initially instructed him to appear March 10 and then said in substance that if he was able to make it, she would appreciate it — which he understood as revising the instruction. He does not claim more than that, and he does not claim she said something she did not.

What he did next is the part that is checkable: at 10:59 p.m. that same day he sent a written memorialization of the call to the named respondent and to a Cook County probation officer, copying the Lake County State’s Attorney and the Circuit Clerk. It disclosed the March 10 conflict, stated he would be available for a remote report from noon to 4:00 p.m., and asked for a time and a confirmation. Nothing came back correcting his account before March 10.

The status nobody disputes

On June 15 the Public Defender wrote that it did not represent him. On June 17 the court discharged that office nunc pro tunc to October 6, 2025. Both records agree with the prosecutor’s own sentence at the March 10 call. A man with no counsel missed a hearing whose date he had put in writing, to two offices, three weeks earlier — and the State now uses that morning twice.

The narrow point, stated narrowly

This page does not say the strike was improper. It does not say the revocation ground is false. It says one hearing is carrying two adverse arguments, that the transcript of it records the defendant as unrepresented, and that the label the federal brief needs does not appear in either state instrument the State filed.

The full comparison: the brief, the transcript, and the certified docket.