More transparency needed for criminal courts judges in Illinois – Wirepoints

By: Matt Rosenberg

News comes daily from Chicago and Cook County about suspects freshly charged in heinous crimes even though they were already on probation or parole for earlier misdeeds, or awaiting trial while out on bail. And each time that happens we wonder how. And who is responsible. Judges bear a lot of the responsibility. They are the deciders, in the end. But the way we evaluate and elect judges in Cook County is rotten. And that’s because their aggregate records in handling criminal cases are hidden from public view, by law. That has got to change. 

First, let’s consider some of the evidence that judges make the violent crime problem worse.

Start by saying these names.

Ella French, a Chicago police officer. Eight-year-old Melissa Ortega of Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, who moved there with her family from Mexico so she could attend a special school. Olga Calderon, a Walgreen’s clerk working in Wicker Park and mother of two young children. Twenty-four-year-old Denny Zheng, a University of Chicago graduate student, from China. Keith Cooper, 73, of Chicago. A military veteran and grandfather. Former Chicago firefighter Dwain Williams, 65, father of four and mentor to young black men seeking careers in emergency services. Michael Mickey, an armored vehicle driver beloved by his friends. His aunt Lunyea Wilson. 

All black, Latino, or Asian. All slain during the commission of new street crimes allegedly committed by now-charged suspects who were already on probation, on parole, or out on bond before trial. The charged suspects in these murders had all previously been charged or convicted for other serious crimes. Yet here they were out on the street again. Doing their worst, according to police and prosecutors who’ve developed the newer charges against them. Don’t you wonder: how did they even get to be able to do that?

Yes there’s a “presumption of innocence” until a prior case is decided. But there should also be presumption of danger posed by a suspect charged with a violent offense. Judges are the deciders. Their mistakes can lead to new violent victimizations including murder. 

Yet state law shields judges from public scrutiny. The Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook county spells it out: “The case data available on-line is the electronic docket which contains brief summaries of court documents and court events in a particular case. Currently, the Illinois Supreme Court’s Electronic Access Policy for Circuit Court Records of the Illinois Courts…prohibits remote access to actual case documents.” 

Remote access is exactly what’s needed. Today, professional intermediaries like news reporters can go into county courthouses and report from actual case records. In some instances, they do. They report names of defendants, prosecutors, public defenders, and judges. And bless them for their outstanding work. One example is the site CWB Chicago. But even as diligent as they are, the work is piecemeal. And that’s just one rock-star court news operation in one county of the state.

For mere mortals that can’t camp out while poring over case records at county courts buildings, there’s got to be a better way. The upshot: in Illinois we don’t have anything resembling complete online performance data for judges across the state’s county criminal court systems. And the decisions of judges can be a matter of life and death. We need to disintermediate the information. 

A major barrier is the state’s Freedom of Information Act. It exempts the courts from public disclosure requests. A recent bill that sounded like it would help, didn’t even go at the elephant in the room. And it still failed. HB5109 was introduced by Rep. Curtis Tarver II (D-25th). It merely sought to surface things like court operations and budgetary information. The bill went to the Rules Committee to die. Twice. 

But the very thing exempted from disclosure in Rep. Tarver’s bill is precisely what most needs disclosing: “all records of a judicial body of this State related to court cases and court decision making.” 

Let’s not water down judicial transparency. Let’s beef it up. There’s a re-election system for county judges that’s awkward. They don’t even face challengers. That’s not good for accountability, either. Instead, incumbent judges face retention votes every six years by the public. If they are “associate justices” it is merely other judges who vote on their retention. 

The way that judges and associate judges earn new terms in office shields their records from scrutiny. We should do away with private retention votes for associate justices. 

Then, key components of court proceedings like the transcripts of main arguments and rulings should be fully transparent through online judicial transparency portals in each and every Illinois county. Remember that word: online. 

The general public should be able to easily access online answers to questions such as these: what type of cases were tried before each criminal court judge? What alleged crimes were they hearing about, and what were the case outcomes? 

For those defendants who were found guilty or pled guilty, what were the sentences versus the sentencing range for the crime involved? What were the criminal histories of defendants, and their outcomes if convicted anew? How many get-out-of-jail cards does someone get?

Did guilty defendants commit new crimes while on probation, or after their prison sentences were served? Did the state cut short a defendant’s sentence? Then what happened?

The need for greater access to aggregate decision-making histories of county criminal courts judges is particularly great in Cook County, where there were 1,087 homicides in 2021. 

For criminal court judges facing retention votes, we need to know much more about their records in the courtroom. Who’s been letting the hard-core thugs skate free? Who’s administering actual criminal justice to violent offenders? Sure, it will take some careful analysis to do that. Shouldn’t we have a chance to do that?

Interestingly attorneys, their staffs, judges, and self-represented litigants can use a statewide system in Illinois to access county court documents online. It’s a special club, though. Lawmakers should enable more judicial transparency for the general public by lifting the veil on nitty-gritty outcomes data from criminal courts, by courtroom.

If lawmakers won’t help open the door further, then well-funded non-profits should exploit existing openings by deploying researchers to gather and aggregate data from court records on-site, like news reporters sporadically do. Then they can test the limits of the law by putting it online for free, and for all. There’s a compelling public interest: allowing all to see what judges are doing. Including how exactly it is that citizens end up robbed, carjacked, wounded, or dead at the hands of criminals who arguably should have already been in detention or better supervised.

It’s admittedly thorny but some pushback is needed to expand the public’s right to know. In the meantime, the onslaught of bleak news stemming from deadly judicial errors just doesn’t stop. 

There was the guy with prior convictions for three weapons felonies and five misdemeanors. Amazingly, he’d been granted probation after threatening two people with a boxcutter at an ATM. In March of this year this eight-time convict on probation for a more recent crime, went into a downtown drugstore and stabbed someone. Who almost died. What succession of judges enabled that?

In March in Hyde Park one night lurked an eighteen-year-old. An adult, he had three pending juvenile felonies. One was for armed carjacking and two were for unlawful gun possession. That lurker with the pending felonies was charged with murder after allegedly following home a local bartender and robbing him on the street. Three pending cases. Two for gun violations and one for carjacking. And yet it’s routine for such people to be walking the streets. Who is responsible for this?

A Northwest Side Chicago man was released on no-cash bond by a Cook County judge after an arrest for aggravated battery against a police officer, in January of this year. Then in March he was charged in the brutal murder of a neighbor. 

The judge should have taken a hint after the first go-round. The suspect had reportedly thrown a beer bottle at and then punched an off-duty cop. Yet, presto: he was let off on “personal recognizance” bond. Then two months later, it is now alleged, he graduated to murder. 

A man out on bail for battering a bus driver then went and battered and robbed a 62-year-old blind man on the CTA. His sentence? Three years mental health probation on a guilty plea to aggravated robbery of a handicapped person. In this case, the name of the judge dribbled out: it is Judge Joseph Claps. I’d like to know about his decisions in other cases. Wouldn’t you? Not just those in news reports that can be Googled.

Systematic transparency is the aim.

We can learn from other states. Connecticut in 2019 implemented legislation harvesting prosecutorial decision-making data for public consumption including “charges, diversionary programs, bail requests, plea deals…sentencing recommendations, and demographics.” 

Florida in 2018 passed a major criminal justice transparency measure mandating and funding uniform collection of outcomes data in county court systems statewide, for free public consumption. Other states have begun with smaller but still important judicial transparency initiatives.

Scholars Rebecca Love Kourlis and Pamela A. Gagel wrote in the Villanova Law Review, “…sharing information on the performance of the courts and individual judges with the public has the potential to build public trust in the judiciary, whereas hiding information tends to build only suspicion.” They wrote that in 2008. And it was never more true than today in 2022.

Nonetheless we’re still in the early innings nationally and particularly in Illinois in advancing greater judicial transparency. And judges have traditionally had concerns – which once seemed more reasonable than they do now – about maintaining their “independence” free from the taint of public and political opinion. That ship has sailed. 

Preventable tragedies which erode trust in the judiciary won’t stop piling up. Yet in Illinois we still let county criminal courts judges off the hook from disclosure and accountability. We’ve got to end the protection racket. Especially when judicial mistakes contribute to injury or death. 

Whether it is through the efforts of lawmakers or non-profits or both, Illinois must liberate the data on the full performance records of criminal courts judges. 

Or is accountability only for cops?

Matt Rosenberg is senior editor of Wirepoints, and author of What Next, Chicago? Notes of a Pissed-Off Native Son.” He has worked in journalism, public policy, and communications for more than three decades.

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