Football-Related
The Illinois Administrator has filed a complaint alleging misconduct in the attorney’s two driving under the influence convictions.
On the evening of October 1, 2012, Respondent had consumed Jack Daniels while watching a Chicago Bears game in Chicago, Illinois. Respondent thereafter drove his motor vehicle.
At approximately 12:00 am on October 2, 2012, Chicago Police patrol officers observed Respondent’s vehicle partially blocking a lane of traffic on Grand Avenue in Chicago. The officers found Respondent unresponsive in his car with the engine running, in drive, and Respondent’s foot on the brake. The officers awoke Respondent and thereafter observed that Respondent emitted a strong odor of alcohol, had red, bloodshot, glassy eyes and slurred speech.
The patrol officers asked Respondent to perform field sobriety tests. Upon exiting his vehicle, Respondent was unable to follow the verbal directions of the officers and had extreme difficulty maintaining his balance while standing. Respondent failed the field sobriety tests and was arrested for driving under the influence. After his arrest, Respondent refused to submit to a breathalyzer test.
The attorney pleaded guilty in both driving matters.
This article in the Chicago Tribune notes that the attorney once got sucker punched in bankruptcy court.
Then, in a separate incident last week on the building`s 16th floor, lawyer Stephen J. McMullen took a punch in the head from a debtor as McMullen and two other lawyers, Steven Potts and Bernard Moltz, talked settlement outside the courtroom of Bankruptcy Judge Erwin I. Katz…
McMullen is the son of former City Hall reporter Jay McMullen, who is married to former Mayor Jane Byrne. The younger McMullen was socked by 69-year-old Daily James Sr., a retired dockworker.
“I got blind-sided,“ McMullen said. He represents a creditor with a $93,000 judgment against James, of Chicago`s Englewood neighborhood. Court records show that liens have been placed on James` home and an apartment building he owns.
“He could have settled for $22,000 before a jury trial. But he decided to take his chances and he lost,“ said McMullen, who intends to ask Katz to hold the debtor in contempt of court.
Back on the 15th floor, Assistant U.S. Atty. Sean Martin told an angry McMullen that his office had declined to prosecute James.
People Magazine had a very colorful story about the attorney’s father, who apparently had a fondness for alcohol and a good time.
A martini-drinking veteran of 23 years on the City Hall beat for the now defunct Chicago Daily News, McMullen was a legend in the Windy City long before he married the widow Byrne last year. To be sure, the legend was not exactly suitable to a political consort. “Jay gloried in his reputation as a roué, a free spirit and a lover,” recalls his former editor, Jim McCartney. “He had a reputation as a womanizer that he encouraged.” Though of late he has backed away a bit from that lurid history, Jay’s friends still find him to be one of the most colorful characters in the Chicago press since Front Page. But one less charitable alderman on the city council sums up Chicago’s First Gentleman in one word: “Sleazy.”
(Mike Frisch)