What the Record Establishes
- Both ends of this case ran through one prosecutor’s inbox: the detective’s 2022 warning that the drug proof was thin, and the 2026 probation request that used a drug ground to seek custody.
What They Have Not Produced
- The complete discovery transmittal history for the toxicology and injury evidence.
- Whether the substance of the August 2022 detective assessment was disclosed before the September 2025 plea.
- What source records were reviewed before the April 8, 2026 revocation request was acted on.
The Power This Office Actually Holds
An Assistant State’s Attorney in Lake County exercises the charging power of the State of Illinois. The office decides what is charged, what is offered, what is disclosed, and what is filed under oath. In felony review, an ASA is the gatekeeper between an investigating agency’s file and a criminal charge — the person whose job is to know whether the evidence supports the count.
- Decides whether an investigating agency’s file becomes a felony charge
- Owes a constitutional duty to disclose favorable evidence known to the prosecution team, including the police agency
- Signs and files instruments that can produce a custody warrant
- Controls plea offers and the consequences attached to refusing them
If you want to know what the State knew and when it knew it, you look at where the paper landed. In this case it landed twice in the same place. In August 2022, the lead detective on the collision wrote to Assistant State’s Attorney Benjamin Dillon that the medical record listed amphetamine and benzodiazepines without quantities and that proving DUI drugs would be difficult. That is the investigating officer telling felony review the drug element was weak, in writing, before anything was charged.
Then, three and a half years later, the same subject came back the other way
On April 8, 2026, a Lake County Adult Probation unit manager emailed Dillon and ASA Nicholas Shepherd a request to file a petition to revoke, listing four grounds — one of them amphetamine use. By then a Cook County clearance had already attributed that result in writing to a verified prescription. So the drug question entered this prosecutor’s inbox twice: once as the detective’s doubt, once as a revocation ground.
What receipt establishes and what it does not
Receipt proves notice. It does not, standing alone, prove that anything was concealed, that a disclosure duty was breached, or that this attorney made any particular decision afterward. This page does not assert that it does. What it asserts is that the notice is documented, dated, and no longer deniable — and that the records showing what happened next are the ones the office has not produced.
The record that resolves it
The discovery transmittal and production history. If the substance of the detective’s 2022 assessment was disclosed to the defense before the September 2025 plea, a production log says so on one line. Under Brady and Giglio, that line is the whole case. It has been requested. It has not arrived.
The Documented Chronology
- August 11, 2022
Detective Paul Petrick emails him that the lab listed substances without amounts and that proving DUI drugs would be hard.
- June 14, 2023
A true bill is returned; the court minutes appear to note no medical records in the file.
- September 2025
A plea is entered.
- April 8, 2026
Adult Probation emails him a petition-to-revoke request listing four grounds, including amphetamine use.
- July 29, 2026
The county produces the emails that place both messages in his inbox.
Still Not Produced
Each of these records exists inside a government system. Each has been requested. None has been supplied.
- The complete discovery transmittal history for the toxicology and injury evidence.
- Whether the substance of the August 2022 detective assessment was disclosed before the September 2025 plea.
- What source records were reviewed before the April 8, 2026 revocation request was acted on.
If any of it is produced, or if Benjamin Dillon disputes a documented fact on this page, the response will be published here in full, with its date. Read the correction standard.
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