Anita Alvarez is the former State’s Attorney for Cook County, Illinois. She was defeated in 2016 by Kim Foxx.
Injustice Watch and the Chicago Reader examined the origins of Illinois’s HIV transmission law, how Cook County prosecutors have leveraged it, and its impacts on people charged. The investigation is part of The Circuit, a courts data project from Injustice Watch, the BGA, and DataMade.
An unprecedented investigation of court data finds systematic effort to keep Judge James Linn from deciding sex charges after a controversial ruling he made years ago.
Lawsuit: A cabal of the former state’s attorney, a police union official, lawyers and others have falsely portrayed a murder conviction to attack the movement to expose wrongful convictions.
By gagging lawyers in the case against the police officer who shot Laquan McDonald, Judge Vincent M. Gaughan has done a disservice to the people of Chicago, their police department, the city administration, and the Cook County judiciary.
Eighty-five years ago last week, the Illinois Supreme Court branded witness recantations categorically unreliable — a generalization that, albeit untrue, haunts the Illinois criminal justice system to this day, denying or delaying exonerations of innocent prisoners whose convictions rest on perjured testimony.
If history is any guide, the fact that a judge called one of the officers’ testimony “garbage” is unlikely to lead to repercussions. Discipline of officers for false testimony are rare.
Despite what you may have heard, the past statements of Alstory Simon make it clear that he committed a double murder. So how could he claim he was a victim of malicious prosecution?
An incumbent Cook County State’s Attorney has not been defeated in a primary since at least 1896. There is a message there: Anita Alvarez should resign now.
The Republican nominee to replace Anita Alvarez, Chris Pfannkuche, has a rare opportunity to restore the confidence of Cook County residents given good reason not to trust their criminal justice system.
I’m not sure which offends me more — a naked falsehood that Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez propounded in a letter to the editor published in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune or the newspaper’s naked irresponsibility in letting her get away with it.