A Cook County judge Thursday found former Ald. Ricardo Munoz not guilty of misdemeanor domestic battery, citing inconsistencies between Munoz’s wife’s account of the incident and the allegations listed on the charging documents.
Munoz’s misdemeanor domestic violence charge stemmed from an alleged altercation with Betty Torres-Munoz, on New Year’s Eve.
Judge Callie Lynn Baird ruled immediately Thursday after about three hours of testimony during the bench trial, which included both Torres-Munoz and the former Little Village alderman on the witness stand. The estranged couple gave different accounts of their quarrel the night of Dec. 31, which was touched off a day earlier when Torres-Munoz discovered text messages from the alderman’s mistress on her husband’s cellphone.
Torres-Munoz said her husband was drunk and angry after she told him he had to leave their house, and that he grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her “violently,” causing her to fall onto a staircase. Munoz testified that he remained calm, and pushed his wife as he tried to get past her and up the stairs to get some clothing and medication before he left.
Police reports and notes from a nurse who talked with Torres-Munoz when she visited a hospital two days later both said Torres-Munoz had been “grabbed” by her husband, the judge noted, citing inconsistencies in both statements given to police, the nurse and on the witness stand and charging documents that said Torres-Munoz was “pushed about the body.”
“She never said he ‘pushed’ her... If she said she had been pushed, it would have been in the reports,” the judge said before making her ruling. “Your complaining witness’ statement does not conform to your complaint.”
Munoz declined comment as he walked out of the courthouse. Torres-Munoz left a few minutes later and also declined to talk to reporters.
In January, Torres-Munoz filed a petition for an order of protection saying she and her husband “engaged in a [heated] argument” and that Munoz “forcibly” grabbed her and pushed her backward, causing her to hit her back and head, and twisted her arm.
On the witness stand, Munoz characterized his wife as the aggressor, stating that she had thrown a tumbler of rum and a potted plant at him before he left the house, then returned to get a few items only to be blocked by his wife as he tried to get up the stairs.
“I was trying to get upstairs and she had already pushed me,” said Munoz. “I put my hands up and was trying to stop her from pushing me.”
Munoz admitted pushing his wife, after she pushed him, in a statement filmed on the body-camera of a police sergeant who came to his ward office to investigate Torres-Munoz’s report to police.
Torres-Munoz wept on the stand, and said that Munoz had grabbed at her a year earlier, after she confronted him about his womanizing after she found texts from another woman on Munoz’s phone. She didn’t report the incident to police, she said, because she had called on previous occasions “and I knew they would not put (Munoz) on the record.”
On New Year’s Eve, she said Munoz was enraged when she insisted he leave the house, and refused to give him his car keys because he had been drinking.
Asked by Munoz’s lawyer, Richard Kling, if she had lost her balance and fallen, she replied tartly.
“I lost my balance, yes, because he was violently shaking me,” she said.
The couple, who have filed for divorce, were married for 30 years at the time of Munoz’s arrest. Torres-Munoz was granted an order of protection despite the not guilty verdict. She was granted an order of protection in January, but asked to withdraw the order a few weeks later, saying she hoped to reconcile with her husband. In March, Baird again barred Munoz from the home.
Munoz, who did not seek re-election in the 22nd Ward, has been living with a relative in Carol Stream and is in counseling for alcoholism.
