Nearly five years ago at the St. Clair Country Club, attorney Margaret Lowery overheard something she wasn’t meant to hear. She repeated it to authorities, and ever since, trouble has followed in the form of bar complaints.
It came to a head midway though 2018, when Lowery petitioned St. Clair County Circuit Court to substitute Chief Judge Andrew Gleeson from a case she was pursuing against Trent’s Quality Construction for allegedly having shown bias against her previously.
“On December 30, 2016, Lowery overheard a conversation at the St. Clair Country Club bar involving Judge [Ron] Duebbert,” her petition read. “In April of 2017, Lowery provided a written statement to Judge Duebbert for a Judicial Inquiry Board [JIB] response.”
After her statement was leaked to the public, “Judge Andrew Gleeson and St. Clair County State’s Attorney Brendan Kelly filed a complaint with the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission [ARDC],” alleging that Lowery had made “outlandish, outrageous and clearly false and reckless statements implying that there was a vast and pervasive conspiracy to remove Circuit Judge Ron Duebbert from the bench of the Twentieth Judicial Circuit.”
The complaint against Lowery also claimed she had “accused former Chief Judge John Baricevic, myself (Judge Gleeson), the Major Case Squad, the involved police agencies and the (Illinois) Supreme Court itself of being complicit in a conspiracy to commit first degree murder.”
Lowery denied making any such claim. “Judge Gleeson’s ARDC complaint demonstrates his extreme bias and prejudice against Ms. Lowery because he attributes what Ms. Lowery overheard as being her own personal beliefs and opinions.”
That might have been the end of it, had not a legal researcher recently petitioned for public access to circuit court documents which may indicate that strings were pulled to erase DUI charges back in the late 1990s.
Noting that the researcher's petitions followed a disciplinary ruling against Lowery, Gleeson commented in a recent interview: “The retaliation starts again.”
Lowery’s attorney says Judge Gleeson should stop “fixating on Ms. Lowery.” What has always warranted fixation is that overheard conversation at the St. Clair Country Club.