Appellate court orders new trial for Tinley Park murder case in Will County

An appellate court ruled that a Tinley Park man convicted of murder in Will County should receive a new trial because a judge failed to sustain objections to prosecutors’ misstatements of critical evidence in the case.

In a July 24 opinion, the 3rd District Appellate Court in Ottawa overturned the murder conviction for Bahaa Sam, 59, and ordered his case returned to the Will County Courthouse in Joliet for a new trial.

The opinion was delivered by Appellate Justice William Holdridge. Appellate Justices Liam Brennan and Lance Peterson concurred with the opinion.

In 2012, Sam was charged with the first-degree murder of his wife, Nermeen Sam, 38, after she was bludgeoned to death with a weightlifting bar on the front lawn of their Tinley Park residence.

Sam’s case finally went to trial in 2018, and a jury found him guilty of his wife’s murder. He was sentenced to 29 years in prison.

During the trial, Sam’s attorneys argued that he was not guilty by reason of insanity or possibly guilty but mentally ill, according to the appellate court.

A psychiatrist found that Sam suffered from a “severe depressive disorder” with “psychotic features and a loss of reality testing,” according to the appellate court.

Prosecutors argued that the murder of Sam’s wife had nothing to do with Sam’s mental illness.

The appellate court found fault with some of the statements made by Tom Slazyk and Steven Platek, prosecutors with Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow’s office. In 2023, Slazyk was appointed as a Will County judge.

The appellate court also found fault with Will County Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak, who presided over Sam’s trial.

During closing arguments, Platek erroneously misstated the testimony of a forensic psychologist to the jury, according to the appellate ruling from Holdridge.

Bertani-Tomczak told the jury that they “heard the evidence” and told Platek to “go ahead” despite an objection from Sam’s attorney, Chuck Bretz, Holdridge said.

Platek’s mischaracterization of the psychologist’s testimony was “extremely and unfairly prejudicial to the defense,” Holdridge said.

Bertani-Tomczak’s failure to sustain Bretz’s objection “lent an air of legitimacy” to Platek’s statements, Holdridge said.

“It is possible [indeed, likely] that this contributed substantially” to the jury convicting Sam directly instead of finding him guilty but mentally insane, Holdridge said.

When Platek misstated the testimony of another psychological expert, Bertani-Tomczak’s response to Bretz’s objection “only exacerbated the problem,” Holdridge said.

Bertani-Tomczak “trivialized” Bretz’s objection by characterizing it as “splitting hairs,” Holdridge said.

Slazyk made an “improper and misleading” argument to the jury when he asserted that Sam was not insane because the word “insane” did not appear in certain hospital records, Holdridge said.

Bertani-Tomczak’s response to Bretz’s objection “increased the prejudicial impact” of Slazyk’s “improper argument,” Holdridge said.

Bertani-Tomczak essentially told the jury that it was up to them to decide whether Slazyk’s argument was “reasonable and persuasive.”

“The impact of the [prosecutors’] improper comments, and [Bertani-Tomczak’s] failure to redress them effectively, rendered the trial unfair and very likely influenced the jury’s verdict,” Holdridge said. “The cumulative nature of the errors only compounded their harm.”