60 Years, Out in 30

Another Cook county judge releasing a murderer, and no one told the mother of the victim:

• Despite receiving a natural life prison term for the murder and decapitation of a friend more than 30 years ago in Barrington, Paul Modrowski is free again after a judge ruled the defendant had been too harshly sentenced in a grisly crime that garnered widespread headlines.

  Modrowski was quietly released without media fanfare July 2 from Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet after serving more than three decades behind bars. He turns 50 later this year and, according to public records, is living with a relative in the southwest suburbs.

  Two hikers found Dean Fawcett’s dismembered body without its head, left arm and right hand near a railroad embankment in Barrington on Jan. 18, 1993. Prosecutors charged Modrowski and a co-defendant, Robert Faraci, with the 22-year-old LaGrange Park man’s murder that April.

  In a Tribune interview, the victim’s mother, Mary Kay Fawcett, said she assumed her son’s killer would die in prison. “I just figured with what he had done, no way would they ever let him out,” Fawcett said. “The thing I keep wondering, hopefully it was quick and my son didn’t suffer. It’s hard to comprehend, even after 30 years.”

And the offending judge:

• Cook County Judge Marc Martin resentenced Modrowski on June 28 to 60 years in prison. Under sentencing laws in place at the time of the crime, Modrowski was eligible for day-for-day credit, allowing for his release days later. He must serve three years of mandatory supervised release.

  In a recent ruling, Martin had tossed out Modrowski’s original life sentence after finding in part that he had been unfairly portrayed as emotionless and cold during the trial and sentencing proceedings when the characteristics were likely due to his autism.

Um, he forced the victim into a car, shot him, chopped off the head, left arm, right hand (none of which were ever found), and expressed no regret for any of it. We don't care if he was a high-level functioning autistic, he's a psycho and should have died behind bars. 

Now he's a fifty-year-old psycho running around in reasonably good health and might live another forty years. Have you seen a list of serial killers who reached their prime killing years during their forties and fifties? It's extensive. 

Cook county courts are beyond broken.