CHICAGO – The shocking domestic attack on the Northwest Side captured the attention of many Chicagoans last Tuesday. A woman was stabbed to death, officials say, at the hands of her husband, who was found dead of a gunshot wound nearby. A Chicago police officer who intervened in the attack and fired shots at the husband also suffered a gunshot wound to the leg.
There are still many questions left unanswered and there are some developments we would like to share:
- CWBChicago has secured court transcripts to learn more about a judge’s decision to let Constantin Beldie go home via GPS monitoring instead of keeping him in jail as prosecutors requested after an indictment last month domestic battery charges had been filed against him.
- Our team reviewed the court records and found that the judge who made that decision denies detainer requests 60% of the time, far more often than other judges hearing similar cases.
- Have relatives launched a GoFundMe in honor of the victim, Mirela Beldie, so that she can be buried in her home country of Romania.
- Officials have yet to determine who shot her husband, Constantin.
Lacramioara “Mirela” Beldie was 54 when she was fatally stabbed in the 5600 block of West Leland last Tuesday afternoon. Just a day earlier, her husband pleaded not guilty to aggravated domestic battery by strangulation, attempted kidnapping and other crimes stemming from allegations that he violently attacked Mirela last month.
Mirela, a nanny, “put her heart into caring for others and created lasting relationships with the families she worked with,” her family says. says GoFundMe. “No matter what life threw at her, Mirela had a smile that radiated warmth, compassion and love. Even in the most difficult of times, her positive attitude and unyielding kindness shone brightly, bringing comfort and joy to those around her.”
Not long after Mirela was killed, investigators found her 57-year-old husband dead in a car near his home in the 5700 block of West Giddings, records show. As of Sunday evening, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office has not released a cause or manner of his death. The key to their decision will be determining who fired the shot that killed him.
Frequent denials
Under Illinois’ cashless bail system, prosecutors must petition and successfully convince a judge when they want a suspect to be jailed pending trial.
Some activists are now pleads for relocation by Judge Thomas Nowinski, who released Constantin after charges were filed against him in October.
Curious to see how Nowinski’s decisions on detention hearings compare to those of other judges handling domestic violence cases, we requested court records of the detention hearings he held between October 16 and November 16.
During that period, we found 85 cases in which prosecutors asked Nowkinski to detain a suspect. He approved only 34 of the petitions, exactly 40%.
Is that high or low? Well, we know that non-domestic detention hearings in Chicago are approved about 66% of the time. But what about the housemates?
Nowinski works during the week and handles city business. On weekends and holidays, the cases he normally hears at first appearance, plus suburban domestic workers, are heard by a rotating roster of preliminary judges at 26th and California.
Between October 16 and November 16, prosecutors asked these judges to detain 42 domestic violence suspects. The judges agreed 24 times. That’s 57%.
Note that most weekend and holiday cases were handled by two judges whose approval ratings for foreign detention are among the lowest of any provisional judge: Judge William Fahy (59%) and Judge Caroline Glennon-Goodman (53%). .
Detention denied
Constantin appeared before Nowinski in domestic violence court on October 9. He was there for a detention hearing, a chance for prosecutors to argue for his detention pending trial and a chance for his lawyers to argue against it.
Transcripts of that hearing show that there was significant violence, but it was not enough to convince Nowinski that Constantin should be jailed.
Prosecutors said the couple had been married for about 30 years but lived separately. On the morning of Oct. 3, Mirela was walking through an alley near her home when Constantin arrived in a Kia and got out, accusing her of poisoning him, prosecutor Mary Ballow said.
He pulled her to the ground, punched her in the face, kicked and punched her. Mirela screamed, Ballow continued. She said Constantin put his hands over her face and nose, causing her to lose breath, and dragged her to the backseat of his car. Mirela broke away about 10 seconds later, Ballow said.
A witness, whose Ring camera recorded the entire attack, saw Constantin flee and called an ambulance for Mirela, whose face was covered in blood, Ballow said. EMS took Mirela to a hospital for treatment, including stitches to her forehead.
After addressing several objections from Constantin’s attorney, Judge Nowinski said it appeared “there was some pretty sloppy work done by the police or by the police” in preparing for the hearing.
The defense attorney also offered a different version of events, arguing that Mirela fell and was not pulled to the ground by Constantin and that “if surveillance video exists of this entire incident, it would show that my client never strangled.” [Mirela] and never pulled her into his car.
A court official responsible for providing preliminary assessments for judges to consider, essentially an attempt to predict a suspect’s likelihood of violating pretrial release, told Nowinski that Constantin scored a low score of two out of six for potential new criminal activities and the risk that he would not appear. . His score for domestic violence was ‘inconclusive’, but low: one. The responses to several surveys used to create those scores were blank on Constantin’s questionnaire.
Nowinski explained his decision to let Constantin go home on a GPS monitor, saying the state could not prove the ankle bracelet would not be enough to limit the risks.
The judge also said, “There is no history of domestic violence,” but Ballow told him there had been another domestic incident in January that resulted in a protective order being issued against Constantin. He obeyed that order, which was later revoked.
This story is made possible by contributions to the Cook County Courtroom Transparency Fund.
