This has been an exciting year of growth and impact for Injustice Watch. We added five new people to our editorial team; published several investigative journalism projects about the court system; and saw results from our past reporting, both recent work and stories we published years ago. Here are highlights of Injustice Watch’s journalism in 2023.
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Joe Coleman Act fails to live up to its promise
Reporter Carlos Ballesteros partnered with WBEZ’s Shannon Heffernan and Amy Qin to report on the implementation of the Joe Coleman Act, a law passed in 2021 to allow hundreds of terminally ill and medically incapacitated people the chance to be released from prison. But as of August, just 52 people had been released. The Joe Coleman Act’s promise has been stymied by the thorny politics of criminal justice reform and the conservative leanings of many members of the Illinois Prisoner Review Board who have final say over release decisions. Months later, one of the people featured in the story, Phillip Merritt, received a new hearing and was released by the board in time to spend Thanksgiving with his family. This project was read in dozens of publications across the state and the country through partnerships with the Associated Press and Capitol News Illinois, which has a network of 500 print and broadcast partners across Illinois. We also sent the story to every person in prison in Illinois who had applied for medical release but had not been released, and we received dozens of responses. A day after we published our investigation, Gov. JB Pritzker, who appoints the board’s members, defended his administration’s handling of medical release requests under the law.
Older adults in Illinois are suffering from financial abuse
In August, we published a multipart series by senior reporter David Jackson on the failures of Illinois’ Adult Protective Services division to protect older adults from the growing crime of financial exploitation. Through court records, law enforcement data, dozens of interviews, and confidential case files, we showed how the agency tasked with protecting older adults from abuse is ill-equipped to handle complex cases of financial fraud. Victims often end up losing their life savings. Many also become wards of the state, their meager estates managed in probate court by the Office of the Cook County Public Guardian. The project was published in partnership with the Chicago Sun-Times and was also republished by Block Club Chicago. We printed copies of the feature story and distributed it, along with resources to protect older adults from financial fraud, at community events across Cook County. After the story was published, one of the state’s largest adult protective services contractors hosted a series of town halls to discuss possible reforms in light of our reporting.
Continued reporting on U Visa denials
In February, we reported that the Illinois attorney general’s office is investigating the Chicago Police Department’s handling of U visas, which can provide a path to citizenship for undocumented crime victims. Their investigation was sparked by our reporting last year that CPD had denied hundreds of U visa certification requests, often in apparent violation of federal and state law. Reporter Carlos Ballesteros then turned his focus to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, which for years has told U visa applicants it couldn’t certify their requests because the department didn’t have a U visa policy in place, despite a 2019 state law requiring one. For some people who were victims of child sexual abuse, DCFS is the only agency able to certify their U visa request. A month after our story was published, DCFS sent an email to attorneys saying the agency was now accepting U visa certification requests. In May, the woman whose case we highlighted finally received her U visa certification from DCFS.
Sometimes politicians make promises to act on our reporting but don’t follow through. In June, we followed up on promises from Chicago’s city council to host hearings on the police department’s U visa failures. Six months after a majority of city council members signed on to a resolution calling for hearings into CPD’s U visa process, nothing had happened. We’ll keep following up and holding elected officials accountable to their word.
Juvenile detention centers across the state fail standards
In March, reporters Carlos Ballesteros and Kelly Garcia were the first to report on a scathing new report about the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, part of our ongoing coverage of the state’s largest juvenile jail. The report, which followed 1,000 hours of research, interviews, and site visits by the advocacy group Equip for Equality, found “excessive confinement and dangerous physical restraint practices” and violations of state and federal laws governing education for kids with disabilities. After the report came out, Cook County Circuit Court Chief Judge Timothy Evans, whose office oversees the detention center, announced additional programming for youths incarcerated at the jail.
But in November, we found many youth jails statewide — including the Cook County detention center — are failing the state’s minimum standards for juvenile detention facilities. The latest reports from the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice found just four of the state’s 16 juvenile jails were in compliance with state standards last year. The department has a mandate to inspect and report on juvenile jails but has no power to enforce changes.
FirstHand: Reentry
We partnered with WTTW’s FirstHand series this year to publish stories related to reentry, through the perspectives and stories of people in the Chicago area. Our first story, by reporter Grace Asiegbu and former reporting resident Adriana Martinez-Smiley, looked broadly at the current state of reentry programs and initiatives at the state, county, and city level to provide additional support to people leaving prison. The second story in the series, by reporter Carlos Ballesteros, focused on the unique challenges facing older adults when they leave prison. At least 17,000 adults age 50 and older have left Illinois prisons since 2014, our investigations found, and thousands more are in line to come out soon. Older adults face challenges finding jobs and housing, and many return from long prison sentences with chronic illnesses and disabilities.
Legislation following SCRAM investigation
Since December 2021, senior reporter Maya Dukmasova had been reporting on a little-known electronic alcohol monitor known as SCRAM, which continuously monitors the sweat molecules on someone’s skin to determine whether they’ve consumed alcohol. Her reporting found the monitors were sometimes ordered in cases that had nothing to do with alcohol, and they carried a sometimes-devastating financial burden for defendants, who were charged fees that could amount to hundreds of dollars per month. In July, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed a bill into law prohibiting judges from ordering alcohol monitoring in cases unrelated to alcohol abuse and establishing clearer criteria for who can afford the drug-testing fees while on probation. Advocates who helped push for the bill said it was sparked by our reporting. The law goes into effect Jan. 1.
Judicial ethics, past and present
In May, senior reporter Maya Dukmasova published a story about a Cook County associate judge’s unusual relationship with a suburban massage parlor raided for offering illicit sex acts. Associate Judge Gregory P. Vazquez, who had been on the bench since 2008, appeared on two separate videos last year with the owner of Sunnie Massage parlor — including during a police raid that resulted in administrative fines for illicit sex acts. The day after we called Vazquez for comment, he submitted his retirement paperwork to the Illinois Supreme Court. The following month, his fellow judges did not reappoint him to a new term, which means he lost out on a cost-of-living increase to his pension.
In December, we reported on how a decades-old mortgage-fraud case has reemerged in the courtroom of Carl Walker, a well-respected Illinois appellate judge whose downtown Chicago law office was raided in 2003 as part of the fraud investigation. Walker, whose client was later found guilty in a multimillion dollar mortgage-fraud scheme, has long maintained he knew nothing about it. His defenders at the time claimed the raid was the work of racist prosecutors. Reporter David Jackson petitioned two judges to have court records unsealed and revealed new details about Walker’s alleged role in dozens of the fraudulent mortgages. The records are coming to light as Walker runs unopposed for a 10-year term on the appellate court in the March primary election.
Impact many years later
Sometimes the impact of our investigations takes years to develop. In October, Ronnie Carrasquillo was released from prison after nearly 47 years. We first wrote about Carrasquillo in our 2017 series “The Long Wait,” about the opaque and inconsistent parole process in Illinois. As a teenager, Carrasquillo was sentenced to 200 to 600 years for the 1976 shooting death of a plainclothes police officer, and he had been denied parole more than 30 times. In September, the Illinois Appellate Court ordered a new sentencing hearing for Carrasquillo, calling his initial sentence “excessive” and saying the parole board’s repeated denials meant he had no “meaningful” opportunity for release. In December, reporter Grace Asiegbu spoke to Carrasquillo in his first interview since his release from prison. He talked about his remorse over the death he caused and challenges of freedom after nearly five decades.
In December, a Cook County circuit judge vacated the murder conviction of Darien Harris, who was convicted of a 2011 murder based largely on the eyewitness testimony of a man who was later discovered to be legally blind. We published an investigation into Harris’ case in 2019, which raised questions about whether prosecutors knew he was blind when they put him on the stand. Two weeks after Harris’ conviction was vacated, prosecutors dropped the charges against him, and he walked free for the first time in more than a decade.
And more
In collaboration with Block Club Chicago, we obtained data showing Chicago police made 4.5 million traffic stops from 2015 to 2022 — hundreds of thousands more stops than they reported to state regulators. In a follow-up to our reporting last year on how Illinois’ prosecutor-initiated resentencing law was off to a slow start, senior reporter Maya Dukmasova wrote about the first two people to be freed under the law. Reporter Grace Asiegbu reported in October on Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s move to make permanent a program to provide free legal counsel to low-income tenants in eviction court. Senior reporter Dan Hinkel and reporter Kelly Garcia wrote in July about an inspector general’s report suggesting former Cook County Public Defender Amy Campanelli had been improperly sharing confidential juvenile court records with the nonprofit Lawndale Christian Legal Center. Senior reporter Alejandra Cancino wrote in August about federal mortgage giant Freddie Mac’s lawsuit against a local landlord battling tenants and city inspectors in court for months. And Alejandra and Dan covered the Democratic Party’s candidate slating process, where party leaders endorsed judicial candidates for next year’s primary election, the first story in the lead-up to our 2024 judicial election guide.
Looking ahead
We have a lot of great projects in the works and important stories we plan to cover in 2024, including two Cook County judicial elections, a project looking at evictions in Cook County, and an investigation into a decades-old murder. Plus, we’ll be launching our new website early next year, with a brand-new look and improved navigation.
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