Guest post: An "open letter" from Judicial Accountability PAC

By printing this "open letter" I mean to take no position or offer any position on the matters expressed. The opinions expressed in this post are those of the authors, who signed this post (see below).

To Whom It May Concern:

We write to urge you to take a stand against a problematic judge that is on the retention ballot in Cook County this November. We write with the understanding that it has been the practice of the Cook County Democratic Party to urge voters to vote yes on all retention judges. This practice has existed for more than four decades. As a result, there has only been one cycle in the last forty years where judges have lost the retention ballot. As Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle pointed out last spring, this practice should end because it has resulted in little or no accountability for sitting judges and a less competent and less unbiased judiciary for our communities.

In the spring, our PAC did a statistical analysis of all judges presiding over criminal courts in Cook County. The analysis utilized data published online by Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. We employed a statistician that looked at numerous metrics, including harshest sentencing on drug possession cases, and racial disparities in sentencing. Since each judge had not sentenced a statistically significant number of white people we found that, no statistician would sign off on any particular racial disparity analysis. Nonetheless we recognized that there was an issue, and our PAC created an internal list of the top ten harshest drug sentencers (an analysis that will be released to the public later this month); the top ten most disparate sentencers. What we found were three judges that were on both top ten lists that also happened to be on the November 6 retention ballot. Simultaneously (and separate from us), Injustice Watch did an analysis of the appellate court reversals of all judges on the retention list, and the top two judges with the most reversals happened to be two of the three from each of our lists.

We then did a deeper dive into those two judges, and one stood out. It turned out that the statistics we uncovered represented real decisions that had a real impact. For instance, in the same month that Judge Mathew Coghlan sentenced a white police officer to two years probation for smashing a woman’s face into a concrete bench which resulted in her needing reconstructive surgery; Coghlan also sentenced a 25-year-old black man to 3 years prison for possessing the equivalent of a marijuana joint in his own front yard (because it happened to be within 1000 feet of a school). Within the same year, Coghlan sentenced an off-duty officer to just 3 years for his drunken vehicular homicide of a 13 year old. During sentencing, Coghlan blamed the 13-year-old for playing outside in the evening.

In addition to being on all three lists above, Coghlan gained notoriety in the mid-2000s for the brevity in which he addressed bond hearings. A 2005 Chicago Sun Times article discussed how Coghlan flew through 113 bond hearings in the course of 50 minutes—managing to make a finding of probable cause and assess factors regarding bond in what came out to of an average of 26 seconds per defendant. This is very troubling, particularly in the era of cash bail reform.

Even more troubling was the allegations made in 2013 and 2014 that Coghlan actively engaged in the framing of two different Latino men from Humboldt Park that were wrongfully convicted by the actions of notorious detective Rey Guevara. After decades of fighting, both men had their convictions overturned in 2016 by an appellate court that found “profoundly alarming acts of misconduct” in the case. After their release from prison, both individuals framed by Guevara and Coghlan filed federal civil rights lawsuits.

In 2017, in response to the lawsuits, Judge Coghlan filed a federal court document where he denied he was even present during the interrogation of a key witness that ultimately recanted against the two framed innocent Latino men. But, this summer, Injustice Watch and the Chicago Sun Times uncovered a 1993 court transcript where it was shown that Coghlan admitted taking the offending statement.

Then, in the spring of this year, Rey Guevara was specifically asked under oath about Coghlan’s role in the framing of these two men and Guevara pled the 5th and refused to answer.

Coghlan was found qualified by all the bar associations when he last ran for retention in 2012, and he was endorsed by the Party. But, the amount of damning evidence against Coghlan that has built up in the last two years should make every bar association and every Democratic Ward Committeeman reconsider. If you are part of a bar association, we are asking you to vote not recommended or not qualified for Judge Coghlan. If you are a Democratic Ward Committeeman we are asking you to vote to have the Party campaign to vote no on Coghlan for retention.

Thank you for your time and consideration on this issue.

Brendan Shiller, Board President

Antonio Romanucci, Board Vice President

Jennifer Bonjean, Board Secretary

Jon Loevy, Board Treasurer

Judge Raymond Figueroa (Ret.)

Dartesia Pitts

Michael Del Galdo

Sam Toia

47th Ward Committeeman Paul Rosenfeld

Lamell McMorris

Steven Hart

Tom Johnson

Clem Balanoff