Former alderperson and Democratic Party committeeperson recommends "no" vote on Chief Judge Evans

No, not Bob Fioretti. (Although he presumably does, too.)

I refer instead to recently-retired 43rd Ward Ald. Michele Smith. While she has not held both titles for several years, Smith was at one time both alderperson and 43rd Ward Democratic Party Committeeperson.

And Smith has long had a lively interest in the quality of the Cook County judiciary. FWIW has frequently reported her recommendations in judicial races.

Though now out of office, Smith has again released her recommendations for voters in her former constituency, a list which includes her choices on the judicial retention ballot. (A complete list is available here.)

Perhaps the most notable of Smith's choices on the retention ballot is her recommendation that voters vote NO on the question of Cook County Chief Judge Timothy C. Evans "despite his other accomplishments."

Smith's argument against Evans is laid out in an email. The starting point, for her, is Circuit Court General Order No. 18.8A which "[changed] the way pre-trial bond is determined in Cook County" (links as in original):

We are all aware of the controversy over pre-trial detention. However, underlying all of this controversy is a lack of transparent and accurate data.

In Chicago, the city’s data portal has a record of every crime reported to the police since 2001. It can be searched by ward, date and type of crime. While not perfect, it provides an ability to understand reported crime in our neighborhood.

Cook County has no easily publicly accessible, searchable database for its criminal justice system. It’s almost impossible for the media (much less the public) to actually track the progress of criminal cases through the system.

The decision to NOT have this data for criminal cases falls squarely on the Chief Judge and the [Clerk of the Circuit Court]. Good government organizations such as the Civic Federation and reform groups like Chicago Appleseed have been calling for more transparency in the data processes of the criminal courts since at least 2017.

The impact of this lack of data is significant because the Court’s data has been found unreliable. In May 2019 the Circuit Court published a study of the first 18 months of implementation of the new bail bond rules. The county claimed that rates of re-offending (meaning an arrest) were the same 18 months after implementation of the new rules. No underlying data was made available.

The Chicago Tribune published a report in 2020 after a hand analysis of case files of all murders committed after the report was issued. That analysis found that instead of three murders committed by offenders who were out on bail there were twenty-one.

The Court's analysis of its data is also misleading. In its report, the court stated that after being released on bond, the same percentage of people were not rearrested, 82.2% before and 83.1% after - and claimed that crime by people out on bond had not increased.

However, straightforward math shows that the number of crimes increased after the bail bond rules changed. In the first 18 months of the new system, 4164 new crimes were committed by felony defendants out on bond compared to 3712 in the 18 months before the new system, a total of 452 new crimes – 8 more a week of the most violent crimes in our city.

More shocking is that the court’s calculations on violent crimes committed by released defendants do NOT include crimes such as domestic battery, assault, assault with a deadly weapon, battery, armed violence and reckless homicide.

As of June 30, 2022 the Court states that 83,206 adult felony defendants have been released under the new order, and at least 15,060 of those arrested and released on bond under the new system were arrested for new crimes.

No comparative analysis is available to calculate how many of those would have been released under the old system. The Court continues to release quarterly or monthly dashboards with the same unsubstantiated data.

There are many more questions about this data, such as the impact on the dramatic increase in the number of defendants on electronic monitoring, the re-arrest records of misdemeanor defendants and the large number of crimes committed for which there are no arrests. There is no analysis at all about juvenile defendants, only adults.

The person responsible for the issuance of Order 18.8 and the person responsible for the courts, Chief Judge Evans, has not made the data available for unbiased study.

I therefore recommend a NO vote to retain Chief Judge Evans (#218) despite his other accomplishments over his long career.

Smith also recommends a "no" vote on four other Circuit Court judges, only three of whom are seeking retention. Quoting again from Smith's email:

• 242 Daniel James Pierce - would not participate in the evaluation process
• 255 Ann Finley Collins - would not participate in the evaluation process
• 257 Daniel J. Gallagher - Judge Gallagher, while a compassionate judge, has made it difficult to achieve justice in our misdemeanor cases. With frequent "do overs" for defendants, delays and continuances, even our own attempts to get defendants treatment for drug or mental health issues in lieu of incarceration took tremendous effort by our citizens, victims and our office.
• 282 Rossana P. Fernandez - Several bar associations recommend she leave the bench for poor disposition.