Dec. 04--A convicted felon who was appointed to a south suburban school board last month after being kicked off by a judge last year has been removed from office again after a Cook County judge ruled his expungement did not meet the requirements for him to return to office.
Kenneth Williams, 61, was ousted from the Thornton Township High Schools District 205 board in October 2013 over a 1985 felony conviction for aiding, inducing or causing a forgery in Indiana. At the time, Cook County Judge Rita Novak ruled the conviction rendered him ineligible to serve on the school board, which serves approximately 5,000 students in Harvey, Markham and the surrounding suburbs.
In March, Indiana authorities granted Williams' request for an expungement. He was then appointed to fill one of two vacant seats on the board Nov. 12 at a board meeting attended by just three board members -- one of whom is his wife, Toni Williams.
But Wednesday afternoon -- just hours before the board was scheduled to meet -- Cook County Circuit Judge Thomas Allen granted a motion for a temporary restraining order seeking Williams' ouster, saying the defendant's expungement in Indiana did not meet the Illinois requirement that his conviction must be pardoned.
At a pair of hearings over the past two weeks, attorneys for board members Bernadette Lawrence and Edward Crayton asked Allen to enter an emergency restraining order barring Williams from serving on the board.
They argued that the vote to reinstate Williams was illegal because only three members were present rather than the required quorum of four. They also contended Williams' expungement does not constitute a pardon as required by several sections of Illinois election and school code law.
Williams' attorneys countered that Indiana law states that a person who has obtained an expungement should be treated as though he or she was never convicted of a crime and that due to vacancies in two of the seven board seats, the three-person vote constituted a quorum.
But Allen, in a ruling issued late Wednesday afternoon, found that the "expungement of an Indiana felony conviction by an Indiana court does not have the same legal effect as a pardon from the Governor of Illinois" and that the board did not have a quorum when it voted last month to reinstate him.
mwalberg@tribune.com
