FOXX TOUTS NEW GANG AND HOMICIDE UNIT
In a shift at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, the same prosecutors will follow murder cases fromthe day charges are approved through to conviction, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx announced Tuesday.
The change will shift homicide prosecutors to a new Gang and Homicide Unit within the State’s Attorney’s office, which Foxx took over last year. Themove is in line with how cases are handled in major cities, including New York and Los Angeles, Foxx said.
Under the previous staffing model, four or more assistant state’s attorneys might take charge of a given murder case from the moment a decision to indict the case is made in the office’s Felony Review section through to a trial handled by staffers from the Homicide Task Force, Foxx said Tuesday at a press conference.
The newprocess will have the dual benefit of allowing prosecutors to be more familiar with witnesses and evidence, and also will spare families of murder victims from having to become acquainted with different assistant state’s attorneys during the course of a typical prosecution.
Each time a case changes hands, the victims’ families may have to retell their stories to a new prosecutor, said Joy McCormack, founder of Chicago Survivors, whose son, Frankie Valencia, was killed in 2009.
“You have to reeducate the prosecutor every time, you have to rebuild that relationship, that trust, every time,” McCormack said. “And that is like reliving what happened every time. It’s like going back to Ground Zero.”