The second floor of Cook County’s main criminal courthouse on the corner of 26th Street and California Avenue is unlike the other floors, weirdly cramped. Its winding, narrow hallways lead to low-ceilinged rooms that feel like they were inserted into the building as an afterthought.
In late August, I walked into Judge Joanne Rosado’s courtroom, which, like all the others on this floor, is partitioned with bulletproof glass dividing the fishbowl of the courtroom from the rows of hard wooden benches in the gallery. Rosado, 53, wears her long, brown hair down and has a warm, bright voice. A handful of people were waiting in the gallery to be called. Sunlight streamed through three small, high windows past the lush greenery of potted tropical houseplants and cast their heads with glowing halos. The speakers in the gallery were working that day, but there wasn’t much to listen to. Inside the fishbowl, Rosado, flanked by two bouquets of fresh flowers (which frequently change on her bench), was hearing a case over Zoom. She signed off for someone on house arrest to attend his son’s 4th birthday at a Chuck E. Cheese. “Although I’d rather stay home than go to Chuck E. Cheese,” she said with a chuckle.
I was in court that day as part of my work for Injustice Watch’s judicial election guide. The voter guide is the product of our team’s in-depth research, including evaluations of judges’ appellate court records, financial disclosures, bar association reviews, past mentions in the press, interviews with people who know them — and court watching. Our court watching isn’t scientific or sustained enough to draw definitive inferences about judges, but it can provide a snapshot in time that adds to our understanding of these elected officials.
Often, the notes we take while court watching get tucked away in filing cabinets and stacks of old notebooks, never to be consulted again. But these observations, even if they never make it into our published guide, can be telling. Our day in court could be anyone’s.
This election cycle, I was assigned the eight criminal division judges at 26th Street running for retention. Some I’d been hearing about for years; others were new to me. But every one of them revealed something of themselves, even in the briefest of observations in their courtroom. Too often, stories about what happens in court focus on the extraordinary — the drama at the center of high-profile cases. We hear judges speak, but we don’t get a sense of what it’s like to be around them or a feel for their idiosyncrasies. Here’s some of what I saw as I watched them at work.
On a Thursday morning, more than a dozen family members of the victim of a deadly DUI crash filled the pews in Judge William Gamboney’s second-floor courtroom, patiently waiting for him to return from chambers, where he was conferencing with the prosecutor and defense attorney representing the man accused of killing their loved one. Gamboney, 74, white, with a head of silver hair and rectangular glasses, has a mellow, grandfatherly air and a friendly rapport with his staff. The family members sighed and shifted on the uncomfortable pews, gazing absentmindedly at the four large motivational posters Gamboney has hung inside the fishbowl, right across from his bench: A seaside cliff proclaimed “COMMITMENT;” a cresting ocean wave announced “INTEGRITY;” a dolphin leaping at sunset declared “GOALS;” a snowy mountain peak looming from the clouds stated “DETERMINATION.”
Down the hall, Judge Arthur Willis, an avuncular Black man of 55 with a mustache and bow tie, was rolling through his call, seeing one defendant after another. He seemed to relish when people were there because they’d completed their probation. A young man stepped through the glass doors into the fishbowl from the stuffy gallery, his grandfather right behind him. “Never forget he took time out of his life to be here for you,” Willis told the young man with a nod to the older one. “Congratulations,” he said to another young man, leaning over his bench to shake his hand, marking the end of the probation. “Now, I’m asking you what you’re gonna do with this blessing? How are you gonna help other people?” Satisfied by the man’s answer about giving others good advice, Willis shared detailed instructions for what he’d have to do to get his case sealed and expunged in the years to come. Minutes later, he was granting a man with a bulky electronic monitoring bracelet permission to attend a quinceañera. “One last thing, sir,” Willis said as the man walked away. “Have fun.”
One floor up, the courtrooms are slightly less cramped but still have bulletproof partitions. Judge Michael Clancy, in an apparent repudiation of such a division between the public and the court, has the glass doors removed in his room. It’s frigid in there, though. A middle-aged man in tight black jeans and a cream-colored T-shirt with a Warhol-esque depiction of Snoopy sat for three hours waiting for the start of his bench trial, visibly cold. Clancy is a white man of 61 whose face is dominated by a shiny, cleanly shaved cranium and who some describe as having a “robotic” demeanor. He worked through his call at a steady clip, indicating displeasure when attorneys asked for unexpected continuances with only the slightest fluctuation in his tone. He scheduled a sentencing hearing for a man in a brown jail uniform, leaning on a wooden cane, who pleaded guilty to the gruesome 2018 murder of a woman who was trying to buy some crack cocaine. As Clancy scheduled a different case, a woman in the gallery murmured: “My son been dead for three years, and it’s like we’re getting nowhere on the case. Nowhere.” Clancy sentenced another man to four years in prison for two cases in which he tried to run away after getting into car accidents with a cop car and a Pace bus. Finally, the man in the Snoopy shirt was called up for his bench trial, accused of unlawfully possessing a gun while he has previously been convicted of a felony. Forty-five minutes later, he walked out of court a free man; Clancy concluded the state had not proved the gun was his.
On a different day across the hall, Judge Adrienne Davis’ courtroom was packed, reporters filling the jury box. She was ruling on a motion in a pair of strange, high-profile cases. Two men in their 60s who’d been in prison for more than 40 years for a 1982 double murder had a new chance at freedom. A federal court had recently said their convictions could not stand because the Cook County judge in their case was convicted for taking bribes to fix murder cases. Davis, a Black woman who looks much younger than her 56, with chunky statement eyeglasses and long hair in tight braids, greeted the two aging defendants, who had been released from custody to await a new trial. She commented that one, who recently got treatment for his liver cancer, was looking much better than the last time she saw him. He thanked her for the care he’d been able to receive. “I want you to be healthy,” Davis said warmly. As she delivered her ruling denying their request to have the case against them dismissed, she emphasized multiple times that the result of the men’s first trial had nothing to do with her decision. “These gentlemen stand before me cloaked in the presumption of innocence,” she said, stressing each word.
Riding one of the dozen elevators at the core of the building to the sixth floor, I found two judges presiding in the grandiose, wood-paneled courtrooms of the movies. They’ve spent much of their lives in this building — first as prosecutors, then as judges. On one side of the hall, Judge Michael McHale, 60, a white man who was one of the first openly gay judges to be elected in Cook County, spent the morning in and out of his chambers as defense attorneys appeared from other courtrooms, requesting their cases be called. McHale has a reputation for having a short temper, which I find affirmed by the tone of a series of emails and an 11-page response he sent me some weeks later when I asked him for comment about, among other things, his reputation for having a short temper.
But on this random Wednesday, McHale was even-keeled and unflashy, calling the 14 cases on his schedule and mostly setting continuances. He sentenced a man to probation on a drug possession charge and waived the fines and fees. As he explained the sentence, someone in the hallway yelled, “Get down!” The quiet of the building was pierced by the rhythmic buzzing of an alarm. People in the gallery looked around nervously amid the audible commotion outside, but McHale continued his proceedings unperturbed, even though it was no longer possible to hear him. Finally, he raised his voice to tell people to calm down. “That buzzer’s going off — there’s a lot of sheriffs coming,” he admonished us, as word of an attempted escape spread through the building.
Just before noon, McHale called his last case. The gallery was nearly empty, save for two pews packed with a dozen members of one defendant’s family. A man in his 30s was led into the courtroom from the lockup area in a blue prison uniform. He was here to be resentenced for a 2011 murder — a shooting in self-defense after a gun sale gone wrong. At the time of his original trial, during which the jury did not find his belief that he was in danger to be credible, Illinois law required McHale to impose a 45-year sentence. But that law had since been found unconstitutional. McHale imposed a new sentence of 20 years with day-for-day good time credit, which meant the man could go home right away. “I’ve not forgotten about you,” McHale said to the man as several of the relatives in the gallery dabbed away tears. “Your case has haunted me for 10 years. I believed you, but the jury didn’t.” McHale said he’d hoped the law would change, and the case would come back to him before he retired. “It pained me to give you that sentence,” he said. “It gives me great pleasure to release you.” As the man’s relatives wept, McHale wished him luck and advised him to stay away from gangs, concluding the day’s proceedings at one minute past noon.
On the other side of the hall, Judge Mary Margaret Brosnahan still had many cases to call. She is 63, with a mane of blond hair and large, expressive eyes. Among the judges I researched, Brosnahan is perhaps the most written about, with a seemingly endless trail of newspaper articles fixating on her marriage to a former Chicago police detective with a sordid reputation. But it’s clear why the first word most lawyers I spoke with used to describe her was “pleasant.” Despite the red plastic sign nailed to the door saying: “NO CHILDREN ALLOWED,” her courtroom felt almost warm. She greeted every Spanish-speaking defendant stepping up before her with a “buenos dias.” She was meticulous about ensuring the people facing charges understood exactly what was going on in their cases, taking the time to explain legal jargon and complicated procedures. When speaking to people, she leaned forward, sometimes off the bench, making meaningful eye contact throughout her explanations. A man in a prison uniform was led out by guards with a thick manila file folder in his hands. He was representing himself, attempting to challenge his 2007 murder conviction and the 70-year sentence Brosnahan imposed. She directed one of the attorneys in the room to set up a laptop with the courtroom’s Zoom feed on the screen, “so that his family can see him.”
Right above Brosnahan on the top floor of the courthouse, Judge Carol Howard is usually the last in the building to begin her call and the last to end it. Howard has been known to run late and be a night owl her whole career — legend has it she once showed up an hour late to a triathlon but got in the water and started swimming anyway. Howard, a petite 71-year-old with closely cropped hair, was one of the first Black women former public defenders to ascend the bench in the building. She likes to stand as she works and doesn’t waste time on idle chit chat. She offered a few words of encouragement to people doing well on probation and cracked a warm smile. But mostly, she just kept it moving. As an assistant state’s attorney announced she was dropping unlawful gun possession charges against a young white man with a face covered in tattoos — the only white defendant to appear before any of the judges I observed in the building that week — Howard gave him some advice. “I strongly encourage you to stay away from guns and drugs and crime,” she said. As he walked away, the man flipped off the prosecutor, but no one seemed to notice. Howard, head down, was focused on her next case.
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