Yesterday Cook County Chief Judge Timothy C. Evans entered General Administrative Order No. 2020-7, an order which, by its terms, supersedes the latest (October 17) updates to G.A.O. 2020-02.
The Circuit Court is responding to the current surge in COVID-19 cases by allowing all court business, "except in extraordinary or compelling circumstances," when not otherwise prohibited by "the limitations imposed by the constitutions of the United States and the State of Illinois," to be conducted by videoconference.
Paragraph 1.a.v. provides specifically that, "No bench trials in criminal cases and no jury trials of any kind shall be held until further order of the court. When jury trials resume, the judge presiding shall schedule jury trials not less than 60 days after the date on which the parties are notified of the trial date."
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6 comments:
This is absolutely crazy. When are we going to stop paying people (State's Attorneys, Public Defenders and judges) to stay home and do nothing. If they want to close the court, then all these employees should be furloughed. When the courts open, they can come back to work and get paid.
This shutting down is a disserve to the public. No bench or jury trials -- until when? Cook County is already the laughing stock -- this makes is worse.
Vague and broad language to give Evans and the other slackers excuse to do more of nothing. Democopoulos 2022 for Chief Judge!
Ok, Tim. See you on my Retention Ballot in 2022. If you won't let me get my jury verdicts to close out these files and feed my family, then your friends and family can lose their jobs too.
So many of these judges were never, truly, in private practice and have no clue about how bad it really is out here. Many more simply don't care. Getting paid 100% of their salary for doing, at best, 30% of their job. I will remember this come 2022. So will so many other lawyers
Anon 11/27 @ 2:46 p.m. -- I think your first sentence is dead on. Most of the rest of your comment is dead fish.
However, if by your "30% of their job" jab, you mean that, were they in the private sector, a great many of our judges would have been furloughed at some point during this Never Ending Year of Pandemic, I agree. We all know people who have been laid off or who have taken significant pay cuts because there isn't enough work to go around. Some courts are conducting a reasonable facsimile of their regular business -- but a great many are not. They can not and, the views of Mr./Ms. Vote-No-On-The-Entire-2022-Retention-Class notwithstanding, it's not their fault. The judge idled by Covid closures should no more be blamed for not working than the bartender at the now-shuttered corner tap. But the bartender isn't earning a living at the moment; all the judges are. Those who have never "truly" labored in the private sector may not "truly" understand how incredibly lucky they are.
Why should they understand? In the City budget debate just ended, a negligible proposal to layoff 350 of the thousands of City workers who, unlike their brothers and sisters in (for example) the CPD, CFD, or Streets and San, are not presently able to do their normal work, was met with shock and horror and outrage by the political class generally and the public sector unions specifically. "Creative" ways around this terrifying proposal were found, including a never-ending property tax increase. To a judge who has spent his or her entire career on one public payroll or another, this may seem perfectly fine. Or at least not terrible. Those of us on the outside see this as obscene.
But hating on the judges who have had the extremely good fortune to keep drawing a public paycheck even as the world crumbles around us all is inappropriate. There are plenty of other, better targets for your venom, Anon. And---no matter who you voted for in the last several elections---I am sure you voted from some of them.
Jack Leyhane always to the rescue to defend the sloths of the Cook County judiciary. I've been filing my cases in DuPage, Lake and McHenry whenever possible because they are actually working. Perhaps not "full speed ahead," but they had leaders who were proactive and kept things moving back in April. In Cook, you have Evans whose single motivation in life is to keep that spot as Chief. Nothing else matters to him. God I wish he had been elected Mayor all those years ago. Instead, his consolation prize has been to run amuck as Chief Judge. It doesn't matter to him if the wheels are falling off and nothing is moving. He appoints Presiding Judges who suck up to him and care even less about moving cases because none of them ever had to make a payroll. It's no wonder that the General Assembly will be talking about adjusting the judicial headcount among the districts with extra aplomb next year once the census numbers are certified. And no, I am not shilling for Evans' likely next opponent. Anyone from the prospective pool is just as much a slug as Evans, but less polite.
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