Injustice Watch (https://www.injusticewatch.org/author/maricohen/)
Mari Cohen (reporting fellow) graduated from the University of Chicago in 2017 with a degree in History and English. Throughout college, she worked as a writer and editor for the nonprofit newsmagazine South Side Weekly, serving as contributing editor, education editor, and director of writer development. She has also worked as the Public Newsroom coordinator at City Bureau and as a research intern at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Mari is passionate about using new 21st century models of nonprofit journalism to report on social injustice. Before joining Injustice Watch as a reporting fellow, she served as a summer intern.
Despite a special prosecutor’s finding that Demond Weston’s torture claims were “unsubstantiated,” a judge agreed with the prosecutor’s motion to vacate his conviction for two 1990 shootings.
Cook County Democratic Leader Toni Preckwinkle produced a video urging that voters cast their ballots against Circuit Judge Matthew Coghlan next month. The campaign ad is a sharp break from the tradition of the party supporting all judicial candidates seeking another term.
Despite an order by the chief judge to take defendants’ ability to pay into account when setting bail, Judge Michael R. Clancy still often sets unaffordable bonds. He is one of 59 judges running for retention this fall.
For decades Cook County Democrats have supported every judge running for retention, regardless of his or her record. That changed Friday, when the party decided not to support Judge Matthew Coghlan, whose record was the subject of an Injustice Watch review in June.
Two law professors studied 12 years of police complaint data and discovered officers with the most civilian complaints were more likely to later engage in acts that led to major lawsuits. The number of complaints against Van Dyke, the authors found, put him in the top three percent, a level that made him more likely to be the subject of civil rights lawsuits and payouts.
Court data since 2001 shows the growing diversity on the bench. In recent years the percentage of African Americans has leveled off, but percentage of Hispanics, Asian-American judges has jumped.
The Illinois governor said he could not support giving jail inmates easier access to vote, as long as the bill also included a provision that required corrections officials to make sure prisoners knew their voting rights upon release. The bill’s disappointed sponsor contends that the bill only required corrections officials to put voting rights literature into the packet handed to prisoners as they are freed.
The organization Chicago Votes gathered 28,000 signatures as part of its effort, along with other progressive organizations and public officials, to convince the governor to sign into law a bill to make voting easier for those locked up in Illinois county jails. A spokesperson for the governor said he is weighing a variety of bills on his desk.
A California lawsuit contends one county has left a private company to charge hefty fees, and threaten those unable to pay with jail for the right to be released pretrial on electronic monitoring. The lawsuit may be a cautionary tale as electronic monitoring spreads as an alternative to being locked up before trial.
Cook County judge Matthew Coghlan, facing retention in November, says he was not part of a meeting where a corrupt cop convinced an informant to frame two innocent men for murder. Court records, however, show he may have met the informant that day.