A federal judge has leveled a $500 sanction against an attorney representing the parents of convicted killer Christopher Vaughn, finding that the attorney was “recklessly indifferent” when he brought arguments in a 2022 lawsuit that “had no foundation in the law.”
But that attorney, Keith Altman, told the Chicago Sun-Times on Friday that the order from U.S. District Judge Manish Shah “was inappropriate.” Altman said he also continues to represent Vaughn, and he still plans action in court aimed at Vaughn’s freedom and exoneration.
“I’m sure it’s going to shake things up a bit,” Altman said.
A Will County jury in September 2012 found Vaughn guilty of the June 14, 2007 murders of his wife, Kimberly, and the couple’s children: 12-year-old Abigayle, 11-year-old Cassandra and 8-year-old Blake. Their bodies were found in the family’s SUV parked in a secluded area along a frontage road near Interstate 55 and Bluff Road.
Vaughn is serving four life sentences in Pinckneyville Correctional Center, records show.
An exoneration effort began to form around Vaughn in 2021, leading to the lawsuit filed in August 2022 by Altman on behalf of Vaughn’s parents. Pierre and Gail Vaughn alleged improper manipulation of the grand jury that indicted their son, and said an Illinois State Police sergeant “knowingly falsely testified” that blood found on a seatbelt in the SUV belonged to Kimberly.
That’s not true, according to a transcript of the testimony obtained by the Sun-Times. A prosecutor did not ask the sergeant who the blood belonged to and he did not say. And when pressed on that point in August 2022, Altman acknowledged the sergeant “did not explicitly say it was Kimberly’s blood.”
Altman stood by the lawsuit on Friday, though.
“There was no doubt that [the sergeant] intentionally misled the [grand] jury to believe that it was Kim’s blood on the seat belt,” Altman told the Sun-Times.
Not only that, but Altman insisted the allegation against the sergeant wasn’t the “main focus” of the lawsuit, which also argued that Vaughn’s parents lost time and income because they had to travel to see their son in prison.
The merits of Altman’s lawsuit were never litigated. Rather, Shah ruled in May that Vaughn’s parents didn’t have standing to bring the complaint. In his sanction order Wednesday, Shah also cited a rule that applies “where attorneys fail to conduct reasonable inquiries into the law and facts of a case.”
Prosecutors successfully argued at Vaughn’s 2012 trial that Vaughn unbuckled his wife’s seatbelt after shooting Kimberly, the kids and then himself, leaving his own blood behind on the seatbelt. Shah wrote that the trial jury’s finding of guilt “supersedes any alleged wrongdoing at the grand jury.”
Shah also went on to write that Vaughn’s parents “no doubt suffered from their son’s incarceration, but not because of a violation of their constitutional rights. It was Altman’s duty to properly advise his clients about whether their suffering was redressable in a court of law. His apparent failure to do so was unreasonable.”
Altman told the Sun-Times that “we brought the case in good faith” and the judge “decided otherwise.”
Shah ordered Altman to pay the $500 by Jan. 24 to Will County, which sought the sanction after being named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
