In yet another triumph for American justice, the woman who mowed down a Chicago cop in his own squad car got away with it.
In a bench trial, a Cook County judge declared her not guilty by reason of insanity. Video clearly shows what occurred. The partially clad defendant nearly murdered the cop.
In an amusing twist in the case, the city hired the suspect to be a top accountant during the legal proceedings.
Naked and Crazy
The miscarriage of justice began the day that bare-breasted Whitley Temple, 35, tried to murder Chicago cop Ed Poppish.
As CWBChicago explained, Poppish was answering a shots-fired call in June 2022 when he spotted Temple “lying half-naked in the street … and stopped to help her”:
As Poppish radioed for an ambulance, Temple got up from the pavement, started saying his name repeatedly, and walked around him to get into the squad car’s driver’s seat, according to officials.
Poppish tried to stop her, but she allegedly told him, “Let me go. This has nothing to do with you.”
Video shows Poppish repeatedly ordering Temple to “get out of the f****ing car,” before she reversed the SUV. Poppish fell into a passing vehicle as Temple dragged him. Then his head smashed into the ground. The vehicular assault left him with a concussion and six stitches.
“A prosecutor who first filed the charges against Temple said it was ‘a miracle’ that he survived,” the website continued:
Prosecutors said shortly after the incident that Temple drove the squad car to a gas station, got out while it was still rolling, went into the station, came back out, and drove away with the patrol car again.
Then, she drove onto the inbound Eisenhower Expressway, weaving in and out of traffic at 97 MPH, and was still going 76 MPH when she exited at Sacramento Boulevard and started running red lights on surface streets, prosecutors alleged. She struck five occupied cars, got out, and ran down the block until cops arrested her.
Chicago police charged Temple with the following felonies:
- Attempted first-degree murder;
- Aggravated Battery of Peace Officer;
- Resisting and obstruction;
- Vehicular Hijacking; and,
- Possession of a police car.
She was also charged with two misdemeanors for driving on a suspended license and operating an uninsured motor vehicle.
But again, despite video that clearly shows the attack and carjacking, Judge Tyria Walton, a former public defender, let Temple waltz away.
Walton said the 35-year-old would-be cop killer “was not guilty of attempted murder at all and was not guilty of four other charges, including carjacking, by reason of insanity, according to court records,” the website reported. As well, “Temple must follow a treatment plan as a result of the judge’s finding.”
CBS Chicago reported that Temple’s attorney claimed she was “in a psychotic state” and that hers was a “textbook case of insanity.”
“She had a ‘paranoid idea’ that people were after her and trying to kill the women in her family, the attorney said,” the station reported. She also believed she was sexually assaulted.
News reports did not disclose whether the attorney offered expert testimony that proved Temple was “in a psychotic state.”
In March, CBS Chicago reported that the city hired her as a lead accountant for the city’s Department of Family and Support Services. The city canned her when they discovered her identity.
In an election profile for the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Walton, a member of the NAACP and the Black Women Lawyers Association, wrote about the most interesting case in her 23-year career as a lawyer.
She represented a 17-year-old first-degree murder suspect. Police believe he murdered a friend “because he was the last person seen with him,” she wrote:
He spent a few days in custody denying it, but after some coercive tactics he gave a false confession. I couldn’t get the statement thrown out, but we won at trial. And he was acquitted. That was my most heartfelt case because he’s now been reunited with his family.
Court Packed With Leftists
Walton and Temple are black women and the nearly murdered cop is a white man, which raises the possibility of sex and racial bias on the judge’s part in reaching her improbable decision.
Yet any other county judge might have acquitted the defendant. In 2020, women and “LGBTQ” candidates won 82 percent of the Democratic nominations for judicial elections, and no Republicans ran against them.
“The Cook County Circuit Court will be more diverse as a result of Tuesday’s primary election, with significant numbers of women, people of color and LGBTQ candidates virtually assured of winning seats formerly held by judges who were mostly white and male,” Injustice Watch reported in early 2020.
Walton ran unopposed in that election, but in any event, in another victory for “LGBTQ” legal subversives, “women and LGBTQ candidates won 28 of the 34 Democratic contests for seats on the Cook County Circuit Court. With no Republican opponents in most races, those candidates appear assured of winning seats in the November general election,” the website continued:
Judicial candidate Jill Rose Quinn made history, becoming the first openly transgender judge in Illinois. Three other candidates who identify as LGBTQ, Michael Forti, Levander Smith Jr., and Mary Catherine Marubio, were also elected to the bench. Both Quinn and Forti had run unsuccessfully in previous years.
In all likelihood, that motley crew will control the Cook County Circuit Court for years, the website explained in 2022.
After the end of a six-year term, voters merely cast a ballot to retain or fire them. They need only 60 percent of the vote to remain on the bench, which is what usually happens. As well, the judges don’t face term limits.
The website also reported that the pro-criminal, anti-justice Democratic Party controls those elections.
