Seven Years After Murder, Victim's Family Still Waiting For Justice
(CBS) -- Seven years after the high-profile murder of young Chicago woman, the family is still waiting for justice.
Most murder defendants go to trial in one to two years, but there is no date yet and none on the horizon.
Dorothy Tucker reports.
Private home movies, never before public, of Nailah Franklin highlight the bubbly personality of a young woman, who was brutally murdered.
"It's been very hard, day to day. It's like she was snatched right from out of our lives," Ashley Chappell Rice, the victim's sister.
Franklin, 28, disappeared from her West Loop apartment on Sept. 19, 2007.
Family and friends waged a massive campaign in search of the 28-year-old pharmaceutical saleswoman. But nine days after she went missing, her naked, badly decomposed body was found in Calumet City.
In the last Seven years, there have been weddings, graduations, births and the death of Nailah's father.
"He died of broken heart because his best friend was taken away. He just never got over it," another sister, Lehia Franklin-Acox, says.
Reginald Potts, Franklin's former boyfriend, was arrested just three months after her disappearance.
He still sits in the Cook County Jail. He's had nearly 100 court appearances -- but no trial.
CBS 2 Legal Analyst Irv Miller, a former prosecutor, says that is not typical of a criminal case.
"You have a defendant who has created a perfect storm of delays," Miller says. "He has hired and fired multiple attorneys. He has decided on a couple of occasions he wanted to represent himself."
Miller says it's up to the judge to decide how many delays there will be. He said the judge and prosecutors probably want to be cautious so that whatever court action occurs will be sustained.
But all the delays, all the waiting just causes pain for a family that wants justice.
"It won't bring Nailah back. It won't erase the last seven years, but it is a closure," Franklin-Acox says.
Last month, the defendant created another delay. He asked for a public defender. Now that lawyer must take the time to review the case and that could take another few months.
