I was talking to my cousin over the holiday weekend. He’s a prosecutor in Indiana. I told him about the case involving Tyler McCoy and found his reaction interesting and unexpected. He asked me why the Peoria County State’s Attorney is handling this case. Normally, he said, a special prosecutor is requested to try these kinds of cases due to inherent conflicts of interest.

And in fact, that’s what other prosecutors have done in Illinois. For example, a police officer in Elgin was accused of misconduct at the beginning of this year, and the newspaper there reported:

[T]he Illinois appellate prosecutor’s office will investigate the incident to avoid a potential conflict with Kane County prosecutors, State’s Attorney John Barsanti said.

Because Kane County prosecutors work with Elgin police on a daily basis, Barsanti said he asked the department to seek another agency to investigate Chris Darr’s actions.

“Some of the witnesses are officers, and we have relationships with some of these guys,” Barsanti said. “And you don’t want to taint the way this is dealt with.”

I believe the same conditions exist here in Peoria, where the county prosecutors work with officers from the Sheriff’s department on a daily basis. Furthermore, the key witness is a fellow officer that the State’s Attorney threatened with felony charges if he didn’t testify against Tyler McCoy. Then there’s the fact that Tyler is the son of Sheriff Mike McCoy, a Republican running for reelection. State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons is a Democrat.

There appear to be more than enough potential conflicts to convince other state’s attorneys to request a special prosecutor. Why hasn’t one been requested here?