Pancreatic cancer jewelry

Dad slain in '92, but justice stalls yet again

Arla Landay's gnarled, arthritic hands are trembling. She wants a cigarette.

Instead, she remains in the courtroom gallery, staring hard at a small pane of glass in a door leading to the Cook County judge's chamber, where lawyers are discussing a case.

Landay is trying to get some hint of what's going on in there.

"I'm shaking like a leaf," the 49-year-old Wisconsin woman says on this mid-December Tuesday, reacting as she did 12 years ago.

On Nov. 7, 1992, her 72-year-old father, Philip Landay, was in his store at 5 S. Wabash in the Loop's Jewelers Row. Albert Lee, the building security guard, appeared at the front door that Saturday afternoon. Landay recognized Lee's face. Landay often invited him in for a drink and a chat. Without a second thought, Landay buzzed him in.

Within moments, Lee knocked Landay to the ground, bound his feet, hands and mouth with duct tape and ransacked the store. When he was done, Lee gathered up some costume jewelry, coins, watches and a folded $50 bill Landay always kept in his wallet. Lee yanked off Landay's Shriner's ring.

Lee then slit the jeweler's throat, but the knife blade was dull, Lee has told investigators. Finally, Lee shot Landay in the neck with a handgun the jeweler kept for protection.

On the bus ride home to the South Side, Lee's lookout man told a joke to "get rid of the negative vibes," Lee later told investigators.

Arla Landay didn't discover her father's body, but she saw enough.

Granted new trial

"There's nothing harder than to have to walk through or around your father's blood," Landay says.

The arrests of Lee and the lookout man, Guy Wilhoite, came swiftly: just two weeks later.

And then, as Landay sees it, Lee entered a protective legal maze from which he has yet to emerge.

In a 1994 trial, a judge convicted Lee of first-degree murder and armed robbery. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Three years later, Lee won the right to a new trial after a state appeals court said the trial judge didn't properly advise Lee of his rights.

Lee chose a jury for his second trial. In 1999, he was convicted and again sentenced to life in prison. He appealed again, and -- along with thousands of criminal defendants nationwide -- benefitted from a U.S. Supreme Court decision that said defendants can't receive extended-term prison sentences without a jury first deciding that the crimes were awful enough to warrant the lengthy term.

And so, Lee faces a third sentencing, which was supposed to happen in early 2004. But one of Lee's attorneys quit, another was transferred to a different courtroom, and a third became pregnant and went on medical leave.

"I've never had a case go on this long," said Angela Petrone, one of two assistant state's attorneys prosecuting the Lee case. "I've been in the prosecutor's office since 1988."

Ed Burnette, the Cook County public defender, isn't familiar with the specifics of the Lee case but said the delays are unfortunate.

"I feel for our client in that case and also the [victim's family] because neither has gotten the resolution that the process should have given them," Burnette said. "You would like, for the benefit of the victims and the accused, to get [cases] disposed of in a timely manner."

Keeping the promise

In spring 1996, Arla Landay's mother, Rosalie, was dying of pancreatic cancer.

As she lay in bed, with an oxygen tube helping her breathe, Rosalie begged her daughter: "Please don't ever let him get out."

And so, a few days before last Tuesday's hearing, Landay -- who has suffered from rheumatoid arthritis since she was a kid -- made the 51/2-hour drive from her home in Taylor, Wis., to Chicago. She arrived at the 26th and California courthouse with her three grown children.

Landay has been told there is a good chance Lee will finally be sentenced on this day. And against her better judgment, she's allowing herself to think it might actually happen.

But when the attorneys leave the courtroom and disappear into a back room, Landay shakes her head in disbelief.

Without makeup and wearing a "Peace" bead necklace and an embroidered dress, Landay resembles an aging hippie.

She doesn't talk like one, though.

"Is it ever going to end?" Landay wonders as she waits. "We're supposed to be the victims here."

About 20 minutes later, the attorneys emerge.

Petrone and another prosecutor, Dianne Ghaster, step into the gallery and lead Landay and her children out into the hallway.

Like a surgeon delivering bad news, Ghaster tells Landay the hearing must be postponed. Again. Some of the documents needed for sentencing haven't arrived.

Landay's shoulders drop. Intensely frustrated, Landay and her children argue in the hallway.

A sheriff's deputy approaches: "Excuse me, you want to take this outside?"

They return to the courtroom.

Judge apologetic

Lee, a tall, lanky man with a shaved head, appears in beige jail scrubs. He faces the bench and glances briefly at the Landay family. His face is blank.

Landay is leaning forward, her fingers pressed against her lips. Landay's son says he sweats and his heart races whenever he sees Lee in court.

The hearing is very brief.

"I apologize for any inconvenience," says Judge John Moran. "But this must be done correctly. ... It's no fault of anyone in the courtroom."

And then it's over.

Landay and her family step out of the courthouse into the stinging, wintry wind.

"He has nothing else to do but sit and stare at the law library," Landay says of Lee, sounding numb.

"I've given up on the justice system," she says, after a long pause. "There is no justice here in the U.S. Killers control us."

The next hearing for Lee, who remains in the Cook County Jail, is set for Jan. 24.