Gorman's Grab Bag

A loss for words

Wednesday, I saw the opposite just before he sentenced a man for a North Side murder in November.

As Krichbaum was reading off the circumstances of the death of James Dow, one of his sisters began crying out and had to leave the courtroom.

The outburst seemed to stun the judge, who took a moment before simply sentencing Michael Lee to 30 years in prison for Dow's death.

Lee was restrained in a special chair after he threw a tantrum at his plea hearing in March and took out a hunk of wood in the bar in front of Krichbaum's bench that looked like a beaver gnawed it,

He has said it before from the bench, and I'm sure Wednesday was one of those cases where the grief and gruesome details of a crime just get to be too much, and the judge just could not say anything.

A codefendant in the case also got mercy (if you can call a 22 year sentence instead of 25 years mercy) from the judge who is reputed to be among the toughest, but as I wrote Friday, Krichbaum is tough but fair when someone is truthful and full of remorse.