Lake County justice has had a drinking problem

No one has yet been charged with criminal wrongdoing in that case. In Indiana, the charge is called operating while intoxicated, or OWI.

But three decades ago, an investigation by state and federal police called Operation Bar Tab bagged Lake County Court judges, a county clerk, a deputy prosecutor, a former director of the county court's alcohol counseling service and several minor court officials and attorneys.

They were convicted for their roles in fixing driving tickets, the bulk of them for drunken driving, for political favors.

Bar Tab, in connection with Operation Lights Out, a simultaneous federal investigation of non-court corruption, resulted in the conviction of more than 15 elected officials and county government employees.

Shaken Democrats at the time beheld the state replace two judges and the county clerk with Republicans, the first to occupy countywide offices in half a century.

Testimony from more than a dozen Operation Bar Tab trials and guilty pleas demonstrated drivers connected to Lake's sprawling patronage system could avoid the embarrassment of being judged in open court, and then fined, jailed, and having their licenses suspended and auto insurance premiums increased.

John Hoehner, a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Indiana, is quoted in a 1986 Times story as calling this practice "an aged cancer that permeates the political system of Lake County and casts an ugly pall over its system of justice."

Birth of Bar Tab

Bar Tab began in the early 1980s under former U.S. Attorney R. Lawrence Steele who assigned a major role to his assistant, James Meyer. Both are now private lawyers.

Meyer recalls, "(State) troopers noticed they were arresting drunken drivers who they had arrested just six months earlier who shouldn't have had a license. Further checking showed one guy pleaded guilty, but nothing showed up on the police record."

They tracked the problem to Lake County Courts, created in the mid-1970s to put on the bench judges who had formal legal training. They replaced justices of the peace, quasi-judicial officials who weren't required to have law degrees to handle traffic violations.

However, these new judges, unlike their Superior Court counterparts, were elected through Lake's powerful Democratic party with all the partisan influences and obligations that come with having to marshal campaign funds and voter support.

Meyer said, "It wasn't the whole county, but certain individuals were known to, not so much stop a prosecution, but keep the records from going downstate ... if you bought $1,500 in (campaign fundraising) tickets." 

Another former Assistant U.S. Attorney, Gregory Vega, complained in 1986 of "the use and sale of political tickets, which has been called the currency of corruption, and which has perpetuated the stigma of Lake County throughout the state."

A federal court document indicates that Bar Tab's earliest inroads came the summer of 1982 when Kenneth Anderson received a call from a Dan Mingo, complaining he had just been jailed for OWI. Anderson was a Crown Point barber who had an inside connection to the courts.

Anderson invited Mingo to the shop. They agreed to fix Mingo's problem for $1,600, much of which Mingo put in a blue envelope.

Anderson then called John Marine, a county courts administrator with access to court records. Marine was seen leaving the shop later that day with a blue envelope in his pocket.

Mingo was a state police informant. He was wearing a wire. The FBI had tapped the phone. The fabricated ticket was bait.

Anderson assured Mingo he wouldn't have to appear in court. But Anderson and Marine did — after they were indicted and brought to trial in 1984 in U.S. District Court. 

The racketeering and mail fraud charges against them also alleged that a trucker who knew Anderson, got his driver's license back in the mail without ever appearing in court. Another trucker who did go to court, later said a deputy prosecutor there noted the trucker must know somebody, because he didn't have to go to jail or pay a large fine.

Marine's lawyer attempted to bolster his defense at trial by calling to the witness stand Lake County Court Judge Orval Anderson, no relation to Kenneth Anderson, to talk about court procedures.

Federal investigators believed Judge Orval Anderson, elected on a promise of being tough with drunken drivers, had presided over several of the fixed-ticket cases.

Orval Anderson was asked, under oath, if he ever disposed of drunken driving cases behind closed judicial chamber doors without a prosecutor present.

"No, no. Always prosecutors there," the judge answered, according to a court document.

Not only did the jury convict Kenneth Anderson and John Marine, a federal grand jury also indicted Judge Orval Anderson for lying under oath and obstruction of justice.

Months after that, Marine reportedly was cooperating with federal authorities to lighten his 20-year sentence. Bar Tab was picking up steam.

More indictments, convictions

Orval Anderson's trial, which ended in his conviction in June 1985, featured nine offenders accused of driving under the influence.

They testified Orval Anderson gave them breaks behind the closed doors of his judicial chambers, after they had contacted Lake County officials to petition Judge Anderson for leniency.

Former county Clerk John Krupa, former county Recorder William Bielski and then St. John Township Trustee Gerry Scheub, now a county commissioner, were among those who intervened for the offenders. The three testified for the government and were never charged with wrongdoing.

Bielski said officeholders were always asking one another for favors. Edward Lukawski, the county clerk, was called to testify at Orval Anderson's trial, but refused under his right against self-incrimination.

He was trying to avoid Orval Anderson's earlier mistake of boldly denying wrongdoing under oath. Nevertheless, the U.S. Attorney charged Lukawski seven months later of conspiring with judges and other court personnel to secretly dispose of at least 30 driving under the influence cases as personal favors, or in exchange for political fundraising tickets.

Lukawski's defense lawyer said Lukawski never solicited anyone to buy fundraising tickets, but accepted them when someone who benefited from a fixed case rewarded Lukawski for having done them "a good turn."

Indictments over the the coming months also included the following: Judge Steven Bielak and Robert Balitewicz, Bielak's court administrator; Lee J. Christakis, lawyer and occasional county courts judge; William Huber, a former county courts bailiff; Paul Kutch, former Gary police officer, county court bailiff and director of the county courts alcohol counseling service; defense lawyer Stephen Goot; and former Deputy Prosecutor Nick Morfas.

Bielak, Balitewicz and Morfas pleaded guilty. So did Huber and Kutch, who it later was revealed, had been working for several months undercover for federal authorities and wore body recorders in return for leniency.

Goot chose trial and was convicted of conspiring with Morfas to make 10 OWI tickets disappear under a scheme in which Goot challenged the legal validity of OWI  tickets his clients received. A judge properly dismissed the tickets, but gave the prosecutor several weeks to file new charging documents.

Morfas used his position in the prosecutor's office to steal and destroy the case files associated with the dismissed tickets. No one noticed because of disarray in the prosecutor's office and the Lake County Courts records system; the dismissed tickets were never refiled, and the drivers were off the hook.

Jack Crawford, then prosecuting attorney for Lake County and now a private attorney in Indianapolis, said recently his office cooperated with Operation Bar Tab. He declined to comment further.

Christakis prepared for his trial by lining up at least 22 or 23 of his drunken driving clients to testify they never paid him to keep their record from going downstate. "Their records were already downstate," he recently recounted.

He changed his strategy when the federal trial judge dismissed some of the fraud counts against him. He and his defense lawyer thought the judge had essentially crippled the government bribery case. However, he learned too late the judge would permit the bulk of the of the government cases to go to the jury. "So there I was with the witnesses gone home," Christakis said.

The federal jury did acquit Christakis of a tax violation, but convicted him of two fraud and two obstruction of justice counts.

Attorneys convicted in the scandal lost their law licenses, as did Christakis.

But four years after Christakis' conviction, a federal judge overturned Christakis' fraud convictions on grounds Christakis never received money for anything improper.

Eight years later, the Indiana Supreme Court followed up by letting Christakis recover his law license. He is practicing law these days in Crown Point.

Christakis said, "(U.S. Attorney) Steele thought he was going to prove up bribery. He wasted a lot of investigatory resources."

Steele said recently, "The investigation was very successful in discovering what was going on at the time and taking steps to alleviate the problem. At least back in those days, the problem was solved."

Former Gov. Robert Orr, a Republican, appointed Republicans to replace the disgraced Lake County officials, including Kenneth Peterson as the first Republican county clerk in decades. Peterson initiated reforms to prevent future corruption, including closer tracking of traffic tickets. Previously, tickets were held in a file cabinet for a month before they were forwarded to court.

Former federal prosecutor Meyer said current electronic record-keeping has probably made it even more difficult for corrupt officials to lose or tamper with drunken driving cases.

Five years ago, the Indiana General Assembly voted to remove Lake County Court judges from partisan political elections. Its judges now will run for election without party labels.

Fresh problems convicting drivers of OWI?

A recent Times review of police arrests in 2014 in Lake County showed more than half of those arrested had their charges reduced from operating a vehicle while intoxicated to reckless driving, a lesser violation. This is unlike neighboring Porter County, where 81 percent were convicted of operating while intoxicated, The Times found.

Leal Hill, lead victim-services specialist for Indiana's Mothers Against Drunk Driving office, said, "We have had three calls in the last two years from concerned citizens who have expressed concern about leniency for drunk driving charges. Lake County is one place where we have received the most calls."

Hill said, "Over 300 people are killed in drunk driving-related crashes every year in Indiana. Thousands more are injured and thousands more are victimized, so for every one person killed in a drunk driving crash, 10 to 15 family members get a life sentence of grief.

"We have to show the public that if you drive drunk, we are going to take it seriously. You are going to jail, possibly prison, if you repeat. People are going to be more likely to designate a driver and drink responsibly, than if they think they are just going to get a slap on the wrist," Hill said.

Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter has said the sheer volume of cases, more than 800 in 2014 alone, compels his office to plea bargain charges down, or risk having most of the cases dismissed for failing to meet speedy-trial deadlines mandated by state law.

While such reductions are opposed by MADD, it is perfectly legal under the discretion the state permits local officials. But state law does compel local court officials to report traffic convictions and court-ordered driving restrictions to the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

Carter initiated a state police investigation in May after discovering Lake Station City Court failed to report to the BMV a 2011 reckless driving conviction for Randolph L. “Randy” Palmateer, 37, business manager for the Northwestern Indiana Building and Construction Trades Council.

Carter said that wasn't an isolated incident, and that hundreds of convictions from that city court may not have been transmitted downstate between 2008 and 2012. State police have said they are gathering court records and interviewing potential witnesses in their ongoing investigation.