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Three strikes for Cook County prosecutors
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Illinois’ prosecutor-initiated resentencing law was supposed to be a progressive policy win. So far, it’s yielded no winners.
Illinois’ prosecutor-initiated resentencing law was supposed to be a progressive policy win. So far, it’s yielded no winners.
As Chicago police have made more gun arrests, prosecutors are taking nearly all cases through the secretive grand jury process, where indictments are close to a sure thing.
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.
“My treatment was a lot different than if it had been my predecessor — a white woman — driving through the neighborhood,” State Rep. Curtis Tarver said.
Cook County judicial candidate David Herrera blew up in an angry 2012 encounter with a female supervisor in the State’s Attorney’s Office. Women in the office say it was not the only time.
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.
In 1977, a judge convicted an 18-year old of murder and sentenced him to 200-to-600 years in prison. Forty years later, the prisoners’ attorneys contend the trial and sentencing were an improper effort by a corrupt judge to dilute public criticism.
Cook County Circuit Court Chief Judge says the new rules he imposed on bond court have driven down the number of pretrial detainees ordered to post cash to be released from custody. “The new system is doing just what I had promised you it would do,” he tells Cook County commissioners at Friday hearing.