“Tuesday’s stunning revelations about former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s abuse of Certificates of Innocence (COIs) may finally force Chicago’s political and media establishment to confront an uncomfortable reality: The city’s wrongful-conviction litigation system has become a lucrative enterprise in which violent criminals, along with their lawyers, are extravagantly enriched at taxpayers’ expense, all in the name of criminal justice.”

And there’s still more work to be done. The final public infrastructure costs are likely to approach $200 million. The costs are not part of the presidential center’s privately-funded $850 million price tag – the funding comes from a $174 million pot created for the center’s benefit by the state back in 2018.