News

Full disclosure

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I am one of eight members of the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission, which referred Jamie Hauad’s case to Alvarez’s office for review, and Hauad is represented by Alison R. Flaum, an attorney with the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, where I was executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions. Although I worked with Flaum on other cases, the Hauad case was not among them. I have had a long association with David Protess, having co-authored two books with him — Gone in the Night/The Dowaliby Family’s Encounter with Murder and the Law (Delacorte, 1992) and A Promise of Justice/The Eighteen-Year Fight to Save Four Innocent Men (Hyperion, 1998). Protess and I worked closely with Paul Ciolino and Jack Rimland on the latter. My colleague at the Bluhm Legal Clinic, Professor Lawrence C. Marshall, was instrumental in winning the stay of Anthony Porter’s execution, and Shawn Armbrust, one of Protess’s students involved in the Porter case, worked under my supervision for two years at the Center on Wrongful Convictions, from which I retired as executive director in 2014.

Commentary

Tinkering won’t curtail police deadly force

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A thorough investigation of the shooting of Laquan McDonald, of course, is in order, as are investigations into every other recent and ensuing use of deadly force by Chicago police. Chicagoans deserve, and have every right to demand, honest answers — but the answers by themselves won’t change the status quo.

Commentary
Anita Alvarez

Anita Alvarez’s pattern of dubious judgments

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The belated charging Tuesday of Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke with the first-degree murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald more than 13 months ago ought to be viewed as an indictment of Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez for dereliction of duty.