CRIMINAL CASES DRAG ON FOR YEARS AS COUNTY JUDGES APPROVE REPEATED DELAYS
Hundreds of people awaiting trial in Cook County have remained in the sheriff ’s custody for longer than two years while their criminal cases get postponed again and again.
That’s according to an internal review by Sheriff Tom Dart’s office that shows judges are a key factor in long delays in criminal cases.
The delays have been on the rise in Cook County for nearly two decades, as the Chicago Sun-Times reported last month.
Dart says the delays cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars as detainees wait for years — as much as 10 years — for their criminal cases to be resolved.
“You have cases that go on forever,” Dart says. “Imagine if you told the victim’s family, ‘There’s no telling when this case will be resolved. It could be one year or 10 years.’ ”
Dart’s office looked at 888 cases involving people held at the Cook County Jail while awaiting trial or out on bail and in the sheriff ’s electronic monitoring program. In each of those cases, criminal charges had been filed at least two years ago. Most of these defendants are charged with murder.
The sheriff ’s staff counted the number of continuances in each case — and ranked judges based on the number of cases on their dockets, unresolved, for at least two years.
Heading that delayed-justice list: Associate Judge Thomas Hennelly with 46 such cases, including the case with the most of what the legal system calls continuances by agreement — more than 230. That one’s an unusual case. It involves a murder defendant named Derrick Pearson, who was charged with murder in 2010 and convicted in 2014. His conviction was overturned, and he remains in jail awaiting a new trial.
Among factors that appear to have helped push Hennelly to the top of the sheriff ’s list was that he took over the cases that were before Judge Thomas Gainer Jr. after Gainer’s retirement about a year ago.
“YOU HAVE CASES THAT GO ON FOREVER. IMAGINE IF YOU TOLD THE VICTIM’S FAMILY, ‘THERE’S NO TELLING WHEN THIS CASE WILL BE RESOLVED. IT COULD BE ONE YEAR OR 10 YEARS.’ ”
COOK COUNTY SHERIFF TOM DART
Also, Hennelly’s caseload includes a large number of murder cases, some in the postconviction stage.
Not far behind Hennelly on the sheriff ’s list are four other associate judges: Lawrence Flood with 44 cases unresolved for two years or longer, Michele Pitman with 41, Joseph Claps with 39 and Geraldine D’Souza with 38.
None of the judges would comment. Mary Wisniewski, director of communications for the office of the chief Cook County judge, says, “The cases analyzed by the sheriff are not necessarily representative of overall delays in case processing.” She says that’s because, despite the delays, those cases account for only about 15% of all criminal cases in Cook County.
A Sun-Times investigation last month found that, in 2003, 29 people had been in jail for at least five years — and that the number is four times higher now. Nearly 500 people have been detained continuously in the Cook County Jail for at least three years, most of them awaiting trial for murder.
Dart says it doesn’t make sense to have such delays. He points to the case of Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who fatally shot nine Black people at a church in South Carolina.
“From the time he murdered them to the time he was sentenced to the death penalty was 18 months,” he says. “You’re telling me we have a more complicated case in Cook County?”
LeRoy Martin Jr., the presiding judge for Cook County’s criminal courts, has said his goal is for most murder cases to be resolved within two years.
Martin pointed to a new case-management system, so far being used by about two-thirds of the judges handling criminal cases, that’s helping judges set deadlines and keep cases moving.
“The National Center for State Courts is now so impressed with how we’re dealing with processing cases despite the pandemic that they’ve recently asked Judge Martin to talk about it with judges around the country,” Wisniewski says.
Brian Ostrom, a researcher for the courts group, says other big-city court systems have large backlogs, too. His organization’s standard is that 98% of felony cases should be resolved in one year, but Ostrom calls that “too ambitious,” noting that many court systems are in the 60% to 80% range.
In Cook County, Dart says judges whose cases languish should be held accountable, reassigned by the chief judge if necessary.
“Show me repercussions that have kicked in,” he says.
For its review, the sheriff ’s staff counted continuances — postponements made at the request of a defense lawyer, prosecutor or both. The average case had 65 continuances by agreement, meaning prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed to it. Concerns about COVID-19 added three more continuances per case, on average. There also were three more continuances, on average, based on requests from defense lawyers.
Asked about sheriff ’s findings on the average number of continuances, Ostrom says, “Sixty-five does sound high. On the face of it, that’s a big number.”
Dart’s staff found Claps granted more than 180 continuances in one murder case against Raul Segura-Rodriguez and Augustin Toscano, charged in 2011 and still awaiting trial.
The cases before Claps were delayed in part because the judge himself had been charged two years ago with a crime: illegal possession of a firearm at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse at 26th and California. During the time the misdemeanor charge was pending, Claps was put on “non-judicial duties.” He was found not guilty in October 2018 and has returned to the bench.
Pittman and D’Souza both work in the courthouse in Markham, which has the county court system’s highest caseload.
Wisniewski, the spokeswoman for the courts, says many factors contribute to delays in criminal cases.
Among them, she points to monthslong waits for a crime lab to analyze evidence, lawyers withdrawing from representing clients, time needed for behavioral exams of defendants, lawyers’ scheduling conflicts, the same defendant facing multiple cases and even an unfamiliarity with the law of defendants who choose to represent themselves.
The potential danger in uniformly pushing cases forward, Wisniewski says, is this: “If cases are forced to trial prematurely, the case will be appealed, and the judge will be reversed.”
Dart says that, besides delaying justice, tens of millions of dollars have been spent to jail inmates whose cases languish for years — a $190-a-day-per-inmate cost that his office has to foot even though the county slashed his budget this year.
Continuances in Cook County’s criminal courts have been under a microscope for more than 50 years. In 1968, a University of Chicago Law Review paper took on the subject. It looked at 524 defendants and found that defense lawyers were seeking continuances for reasons that included hoping witnesses might die and memories fade, defendants freed on bail wanting to stay out of prison for long as possible and private attorneys standing to gain financially by dragging cases out.
Yet the number of continuances in 1968 was puny compared with today. There were just two of them in a typical case in which a defendant had a private attorney and one in cases involving the public defender’s office, according to the law review.
These delays have remained an issue for elected officials pushing for criminal cases to be moved along more quickly. In 1997, then-State’s Attorney Richard Devine complained of a backlog of murder cases and blamed defense lawyers for seeking unnecessary continuances. In 2002, then-Sheriff Michael Sheahan said the jail was full of people whose cases were being bogged down by continuances.
The American Bar Association, which is based in Chicago, says it’s ultimately the responsibility of judges to limit delays and says they should keep the public in mind when they consider continuances.
It says judges should have “a policy of granting continuances of trials and other court events only upon a showing of good cause and only for so long as is necessary, taking into account not only the request of the prosecution or defense but also the public interest in prompt disposition of the case.”