Injustice Watch (https://www.injusticewatch.org/tag/cook-county-circuit-court/)
In an open letter to Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans, reform advocates are demanding the release of as many detainees as possible in order to mitigate risks related to the new coronavirus.
The court will suspend all non-essential matters for 30 days starting Tuesday, the chief judge told presiding judges in a three-hour meeting on Friday.
The committee that provides funding for Cook County circuit judges’ retention campaigns is turning much of its money over to the Cook County Democratic party, even though the party is mounting a campaign to defeat one retention judge, Matthew Coghlan.
A Cook County Circuit Court judge Wednesday denied to grant a new trial to a man who contends his conviction on charges he murdered a plainclothes Chicago police officer in 1976 was wrongly decided by a judge who sought to divert attention from his own corruption.
Cook County judge said judicial candidate Michael Gerber and his co-counsel’s statements in a recently overturned conviction “amounted to a purposeful due process violation that led to petitioner’s conviction.”
Recent DNA testing supports the contention of inmates Curtis Croft and Demetrius Henderson that they have spent years in prison for a rape and murder they did not commit, a newly-filed petition states.
Cook County’s Chief Judge Timothy C. Evans filed suit against the Cook County Board Thursday, contending the budget cuts would require laying off 161 court employees and put in jeopardy recent efforts to revamp the county’s bail system.
Omar Williams was detained for five years, eight months and twelve days on charges of murder. In less than two hours, 12 jurors acquitted him. Williams’s case offered a striking view of just how slowly Cook County’s wheels of justice can move, how askew justice can go and the toll it can take on the lives of those caught up in the system.