Alvarez: No conflicts, so no need for special prosecutor

Published March 22, 2012

By CHRIS FUSCO AND TIM NOVAK

Staff Reporters

Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez says she has no conflicts of interest that would keep her from being able to fairly reinvestigate a 2004 homicide case involving Richard J. “R.J.”Vanecko, a nephew of then-Mayor Richard M. Daley.

But lawyers for the family of David Koschman, who died after the police say Vanecko punched him in the face, say her Facebook page suggests otherwise.

The Koschman lawyers found two pictures on Alvarez’s Facebook page that show her with Daley: one from 1986, when Daley was state’s attorney, and the other from 2010.

They say in a court filing Wednesday that the photos illustrate “that she retains close political ties with the former mayor, who actually hired Alvarez as an assistant in the office of the state’s attorney in 1986.”