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Injustice Watch
Where to find a print copy of our March 2024 Cook County judicial election guide
We printed 120,000 copies of our judicial election guide and are partnering with other newsrooms, community organizations, local businesses, and civic do-gooders to distribute them across Cook County. Our guide is included as an insert in:. The Feb. 28 editions of the Wednesday Journal, the Riverside-Brookfield Landmark, the Forest Park...
A notorious Chicago cop wants to become a Cook County judge
When he announced his candidacy for Cook County judge, Chicago Police Lt. John D. Poulos touted the opportunity to “continue my public service, which spans 23 years.”. It’s a career mired in controversy and allegations of dishonesty from the start, an Injustice Watch investigation shows. An analysis of...
High-ranking Cook County prosecutor jumps into race for judge
Among the candidates for Cook County Circuit Court judge — mostly obscure outside courthouses and bar associations — Risa Lanier stands out. As second-in-command to Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, Lanier has been central to the operations of an office known for its progressive approach to justice and its fumbling of heater cases that exploded into scandals.
judges
Judicial candidates might be among the most obscure names on your ballot, but these elections come with high stakes. Judges are powerful officials whose choices on the bench touch many aspects of life, from traffic tickets to divorces, lawsuits, evictions, and criminal cases. They have the power to take someone’s freedom, enforce or overturn state laws, and correct or perpetuate injustices. Yet there are few places to get information about the people running for judge. That's why Injustice Watch created this guide to judicial candidates running in Cook County’s primary elections on March 19, 2024.
Questions of race and ethnicity in Illinois Supreme Court race highlight diversity of the Latinx experience
Five years ago, Latinx politicians were a united front calling for diversity in the judiciary and lambasting then-Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke for appointing a white judge to a majority-Latinx Cook County subcircuit. In 2020, some of those politicians put their support behind Appellate Judge Jesse Reyes, who was...
911 calls on South, West Sides ignored while ‘rapid response’ cops make traffic stops instead
This story was reported and produced by Block Club Chicago. You can subscribe to Block Club’s neighborhood reporting by clicking here. When Lashonda Tart desperately needed the police on a summer evening in 2019, they never showed up. A gunman had fired a hail of bullets that shattered the...
Dominance of appointed judges in primary election highlights Illinois Supreme Court’s power
All 10 judicial candidates the Cook County Democratic Party establishment is working to get elected to countywide judicial vacancies this year are already judges. Most have deep legal experience and high bar ratings, but also the personal and political connections that have come to epitomize Cook County politics. The candidates...
It’s never been easier or harder to become a Cook County judge
The March primary election will be another record-breakingly uncompetitive one for seats on the Cook County Circuit Court, with 62 candidates running for 40 vacant seats on the court — more than a third unopposed in countywide and subcircuit races. Observers had flagged the previous primary in 2022 as...
Asylum-seekers in state-funded apartment in Chicago face rats and flooding
A monthslong feud between a Woodlawn landlord and his tenants over allegations of unlivable conditions reached a boiling point last week, when a skeptical judge threatened to jail tenants he found to be lying. Within hours, city inspectors were back at the building declaring one apartment housing a family of...
Illinois judge closes juvenile detention center after ‘facility in crisis’ fails to meet new state standards
This story was originally published by ProPublica and Capitol News Illinois. Sign up for ProPublica’s The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. The judge responsible for the administration of a troubled juvenile detention center in rural southern Illinois abruptly moved to close it...
Year in review: Injustice Watch’s best work of 2023
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.
Prosecutors drop charges against man whose murder conviction was based on legally blind witness
This story was originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times. The last time Darien Harris walked free, he was a week from graduating high school. More than 12 years later, Harris was set to be released from Cook County Jail Tuesday after prosecutors dropped murder charges in a case that had relied heavily on the testimony of a man who was legally blind.
Ronnie Carrasquillo is adjusting to freedom after nearly half a century in Illinois prisons
After nearly a half-century behind bars, Ronnie Carrasquillo is learning how to shop for clothes, use a smartphone, and adjust to his freedom after a split-second decision in his distant past cost a police officer his life. “You can’t give back what I did. It’s not fixable,” said Carrasquillo, now...
Unsealed records reveal new details about Illinois appellate judge’s alleged role in decades-old fraud scheme
Two decades ago, dozens of Black lawyers flooded the courtroom of Cook County’s chief criminal judge in solidarity over what they called prosecutors’ racist treatment of a little-known real estate lawyer from Chicago’s South Side named Carl Anthony Walker. Coming to bear that day was the full...
Judge overturns murder conviction that was based on eyewitness who was legally blind
This story was originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times. A Cook County judge on Tuesday overturned a murder conviction that was based in part on the testimony of a witness who was legally blind. But Darien Harris will remain in jail because prosecutors said they plan to try him again.
Most juvenile detention centers in Illinois are failing to meet state standards
In Winnebago County, teenagers in the juvenile detention center had their water shut off for hours “as a precaution to disruptive behavior.”. In Cook County, children as young as age 13 who come into the detention center are inappropriately strip searched. In Knox County’s Mary Davis Home, young people...
Mayor Johnson sets sights on enshrining right to counsel for Chicago tenants in eviction court
In March, Colleen Peters was in Cook County eviction court for the second time in less than a year. The 52-year-old had lost her job as a United Airlines flight attendant in 2020 and fell behind on rent in the two-bedroom apartment she shares with her 17-year-old daughter in Oak Park. The first eviction case, in July of last year, was dismissed because she had been approved for rental assistance. Like the vast majority of tenants in eviction court, Peters represented herself.
Chicago man becomes first in Illinois to get reduced sentence under new law
More than 18 months after a state law took effect allowing prosecutors to revisit extreme prison sentences, 54-year-old Charles Patton became the first in Illinois to be freed under the new measure. On July 19, Patton left Dixon Correctional Center in his wheelchair four years earlier than he expected. The...
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