For the third time in the past four elections, voters removed a Cook County judge from the bench — something which hadn’t happened in the previous three decades.
Judge Shannon O’Malley, 62, a first-term judge in the court’s child protection division, was ousted by voters in the Nov. 5 election after Injustice Watch raised questions about whether he met state judicial residency requirements and the bar associations criticized his courtroom management and credibility.
O’Malley received 57.9% “yes” votes, falling short of the 60% required to stay on the bench, according to unofficial final results published Tuesday.
The other 76 Cook County judges on the ballot were retained, but two other judges who were also the subjects of Injustice Watch investigations narrowly kept their seats.
Judge E. Kenneth Wright Jr., who presides over the court’s first municipal district and who Injustice Watch found took inappropriate property tax exemptions in another county, was retained with 61.5%. Ieshia Gray, who is currently under investigation by a state disciplinary board after being accused of bias and unfair treatment, just barely held on with 60.6%.
On Nov. 6, a day after the election, Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans referred O’Malley and Wright to the state’s Judicial Inquiry Board for investigation over the property tax exemptions. O’Malley will no longer be under the board’s jurisdiction once his term ends Dec. 1.
O’Malley and his attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
O’Malley was the only one of the 77 Cook County judges running this year who was not recommended for retention by any of the lawyers’ groups that evaluate judicial candidates.
The Illinois State Bar Association said attorneys “raised concerns over his courtroom management skills, which, at times, causes cases to be delayed for long periods of time.” The Chicago Council of Lawyers noted these delays “can mean that a child remains in a group home, psychiatric hospital, or other placement longer than necessary.”
Meanwhile, the Chicago Bar Association highlighted Injustice Watch’s reporting about the property tax exemption O’Malley claimed on a home he owns in Will County, saying they found O’Malley’s “credibility severely lacking and his integrity highly questionable.”
Judicial election experts said O’Malley’s ouster, despite a lack of any targeted opposition to his retention, reflects the unusual consensus among bar associations and the increased availability of information about judicial elections.
“The combined effect of all those information sources and the fact that they all agreed that Shannon O’Malley should be removed is what got him removed,” said Albert Klumpp, who has studied Cook County judicial elections for decades.
Voters have more information about judicial races
Cook County judicial elections have historically been fairly sleepy affairs, with about two-thirds of voters or fewer making a choice in any retention race between 1998 and 2016.
But participation has increased in recent years as voter guides, including Injustice Watch’s judicial election guide, the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts’ VoteForJudges.org, and the “Girl, I Guess” progressive voter guide, have provided voters with more information than ever before about judicial candidates.
This year, 75% of voters made a selection in the top circuit court race, with participation dropping off as voters made their way down the ballot.
Voters also seemed to be somewhat more discerning than in past years. Six judges fell below 65%, which was the most since at least 1998, according to an Injustice Watch analysis of election results.
“There’s much better information available now than there was in the past,” said 69-year-old longtime voter Alice Cottingham, who lives in Oak Park. She said before Injustice Watch started producing judicial election guides in 2016, she rarely voted in judicial elections because she had no information on the candidates. “If you don’t know anything, why would you vote yes for people?”
The judges who received the most “no” votes fared better in the suburbs than in the city. Many of them also shared another trait in common: A “no” recommendation from the “Girl, I Guess” guide.
Klumpp attributed some of the city-suburban divide to diminished information about judicial elections in traditional newspapers, which used to make endorsements in retention races and had greater reach in the suburbs, while “Girl, I Guess” reaches younger voters in the city.
“If information use in the suburbs on Nov. 5 had matched that of the city, as many as 100,000 votes would have been affected, and the number of removals would have been at least three, and possibly four or five, instead of one,” he argued in a post-election analysis on the “For What It’s Worth” blog.
That said, voters on the whole were still just as likely to vote to retain judges as they have been in recent years. On average, judges received 74% “yes” votes — a number that has remained fairly steady since 2016 but is down from 79% in the early 2000s.
A new era of judicial elections?
Before 2018, 28 years had passed since a Cook County judge had lost a retention election. That year, against a backdrop of community mistrust over the Chicago police killing and cover-up of Laquan McDonald, progressive lawyers and grassroots activists joined forces to target former prosecutor and longtime Judge Matthew Coghlan. Coghlan was known at the time as one of the harshest judges for sentencing in criminal court and had also been accused of helping frame wrongfully convicted men as a prosecutor.
Michilla Blaise, who led the Judicial Accountability PAC that was largely responsible for the “Dump Coghlan” campaign, said it became clear early on there was a growing appetite for judicial election participation, and the group felt they would only have to convince a small subset of voters to vote no.
“Even us just saying this was the first time in 28 years a judge has been voted off was eye-opening to a lot of voters,” she said. “We kept saying, ‘These are the people you see on your worst day. Who do you want to see?’”
Their efforts succeeded. Coghlan fell well short of the 60% “yes” votes needed to win. Maura Slattery Boyle, another criminal court judge who was also targeted by community groups, was nearly rejected and later transferred to the law division. She narrowly won retention again this year with 64%.
The following year, JAPAC targeted Michael Toomin, then the presiding judge of the court’s juvenile justice division, who advocates felt was overly punitive toward children accused of crimes.
Toomin held his seat, but Judge Jackie Portman-Brown lost by less than 12,000 votes after the Chicago Sun-Times published footage of her locking up her 6-year-old grandniece in a holding cell behind her courtroom for several minutes. Another judge highlighted by JAPAC, Mauricio Araujo, also received less than 60% “yes” votes, but he had resigned about a month before the election after the Illinois Courts Commission found there was “clear and convincing evidence” he had sexually harassed and demeaned several women in his chambers and seemed poised to remove him from the bench.
The difference this year was there was no organized campaign targeting O’Malley or any other retention judges. The judges themselves — many of whom last ran for retention the year Coghlan lost — seemed more evasive and even confrontational at times when contacted by reporters.
Blaise said she thinks many voters had given up on the possibility of ousting a judge, but now, they see it’s possible.
“I think people want to know who to vote for,” she said. She also noted more people vote by mail and have time to look through voter guides. “It’s a perfect storm.”
David Jackson and Sara Stanisavic contributed reporting.
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