Domestic violence victims face risk of more attacks
Advocates cite changes in Cook County’s court policies
Cook County judges have sharply lowered bonds for people accused of violent domestic attacks and prosecutors are dropping more of these cases, placing victims at risk as potentially dangerous suspects are released from custody, a Tribune investigation has found.
The changes follow efforts by top county officials to reduce jail overcrowding and address longstanding racial inequities in bonds that can keep defendants in custody simply because they cannot pay. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle implemented the new measures with the support of State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and Chief Judge Timothy Evans.
Advocates for battered women applaud the intent of those reforms but say prosecutors and judges are now releasing suspects without fully considering the safety of domestic battery survivors.
“Reform is being pursued at the expense of the victims. They have been left out of the conversation,” said Amanda Pyron, executive director of the Chicago Metropolitan Battered Women’s Network.
Police, prosecutors and lawmakers have long recognized that the repetitive nature of domestic violence leaves victims at particular risk from alleged attackers who are released from custody. The Tribune’s examina
tion of recent cases underscores the high stakes in these cases as harassment and violence exact a human toll.
In one instance, a man who set fire to his exgirlfriend’s garage with a Molotov cocktail had been released on a no-cash bond at least six times as he returned to batter her.
In another, a man returned to beat his wife in front of their 3-year-old daughter after he was released from jail when a judge reduced his bond from a previous attack against her.
A third woman was attacked by her ex-boyfriend at least five times in 18 months, but he never spent more than 17 days at a time in jail until prosecutors finally charged him with a felony after he racked up five cases and probation violations.
For this investigation, reporters examined 2,672 police reports of aggravated domestic battery from 2016 and 2018, the years before and after the changes fully took effect. These cases allege attacks using a weapon or fists or feet that inflict serious injury on an intimate partner or family member. Reporters tracked the progress of each case through the courts to analyze pretrial bond amounts and other court actions. Among the findings:
■ Average bonds in these cases plummeted in 2018 to less than a quarter of what they were in 2016. The average bond was $13,505 last year, compared with $63,859 two years earlier.
■ During the same time, judges nearly doubled the percentage of suspects offered a recognizance bond, from 10 percent in 2016 to 19 percent last year. No cash is needed for these so-called I-bonds, meant for people who do not pose a danger to the public. Payment may be required later if a suspect is brought back to court for violating a judge’s orders or committing another crime.
■ Prosecutors dropped more cases before trial in 2018 — dismissing 70 percent of the cases reviewed by the Tribune, compared with 56 percent in 2016. Prosecutors either completely dropped each case or told the judge they were dismissing it for now.
While domestic violence touches families of every race and income level, Chicago police reports of aggravated domestic battery are concentrated in lower-income communities that are predominantly African American, the Tribune found.
“In order to address the harms being done to primarily black and brown men, what are we doing to black and brown women?” asked Vickie Smith, executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
Foxx declined the Tribune’s request to be interviewed for this story. She initially contested the Tribune’s analysis by writing to the Tribune’s editor-inchief and calling it “arbitrary.”
Of the roughly 27,000 domestic battery police reports per year, reporters chose to examine aggravated domestic batteries — the smaller number of cases that involve the most serious allegations of intentional harm to an intimate partner or relative.
In her letter, Foxx objected to the Tribune’s method of finding cases in police data and working forward to track the outcome. Foxx said the crime classifications used by police “can be very subjective.”
Foxx wrote that the Tribune should have relied on the Cook County state’s attorney’s office online data portal. However, the portal tracks only felony cases and masks the case number and identity of defendants.
Since Foxx took office in January 2017, the state’s attorney’s office has stopped following the outcomes of misdemeanor domestic battery cases. “We no longer have the manpower to hand-count those cases,” Foxx’s spokeswoman said, but her office is working with the county clerk “to integrate that data that they have with our data so that we have access to it (in the future) to provide more transparency.”
In a later statement sent by her office to reporters, Foxx also addressed the Tribune’s findings on bonds, saying that those decisions are ultimately the responsibility of judges. “The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office does not recommend or support recognizance bonds for domestic violence offenses,” the statement said.
The statement said her office “strives to keep domestic violence victims safe while treating them with dignity and demanding their offenders be held accountable.”
Evans did not challenge the Tribune’s numbers but said judges are using other court remedies besides high bonds to protect victims:
The number of Cook County defendants ordered to wear a GPS monitor has nearly doubled from
839 in 2016 to 1,602 last year, and those defendants include many accused of domestic violence, said Evans spokesman Pat Milhizer. And judges granted 8,682 civil orders of protection last year, up from 6,948 in 2016.
And among the 2,672 cases analyzed by the Tribune, instances of judges initially denying bail increased from only four cases in 2016 to 18 in 2018.
Evans’ office provided the Tribune with its own analysis showing fewer than 6 percent of domestic violence defendants committed a new crime while they were free on pretrial bonds, arguing that this figure reinforced that courts were protecting victims.
However, Evans’ analysis did not count defendants who were charged with bond violations that did not result in a new case. And Evans would not allow the Tribune to examine the case records underlying his analysis, saying he wanted to protect the privacy of defendants who have not been found guilty of a crime.
Still, Milhizer said Evans will examine the issues raised by the Tribune analysis.
“Moving forward, Chief Judge Evans will explore how the decline in the jail population could call for a shifting of county funds to continue efforts to strengthen community safety and monitor those who are entitled to bail under Illinois law,” he said.
‘What do I do?’
A recent string of alleged attacks by one man highlights how abusers can repeatedly target family members or partners when court constraints are minimal.
Brandon Miles was arrested five times in 18 months on charges he stalked and beat his exgirlfriend Tasha Blanchard. But prosecutors didn’t charge Miles with a felony until December, after he had racked up five court cases and probation violations. In the other cases, he pleaded guilty to minor misdemeanor charges and was sentenced to probation or time served for a few weeks in jail.
Miles is now held without bail as he faces a felony weapons charge in connection with his most recent alleged attack on Blanchard. She is relieved he is behind bars, at least for now. She fears it is only a matter of time until he is released again.
Each time he was released before, prosecutors alleged in court, he came right back to Blanchard’s South Side apartment.
According to police and prosecutors, in one incident Miles entered Blanchard’s house without permission then hit her in the face and struck her with a bicycle. In another incident, authorities said, he tried to choke Blanchard and then attempted to attack her with a screwdriver. He also allegedly broke into Blanchard’s house and hid in her daughter’s closet, records show.
Miles was charged three times with violating an order of protection Blanchard took out to safeguard herself.
In a letter from Cook County Jail, where he is awaiting trial, Miles told the Tribune that prosecutors were lying about him in court papers. “I am innocent and I will beat this bulls--case at trial. I’m the victim,” he wrote. “She set me up and I was a fool to fall in love with her.”
Miles wrote that he does not own a bicycle or a screwdriver.
In a Tribune interview corroborated by records, Blanchard said she spent hours in police stations and courtrooms pursuing charges. In the course of a year and a half, she said she missed so much work that she began to worry about her livelihood.
Meanwhile, in the more than 15 months before his current stint behind bars, Miles never spent more than 17 days at a time in Cook County Jail, records show. And each time he was released from jail, he would return to her home and tap on her windows in the middle of the night, she said, a slow, ominous rat-tat-tat on the side of her first-floor apartment.
She was afraid every morning walking to her car to go to work. When she made it to the gate safely, and she reached the sidewalk without incident, she checked to see if her car tires were slashed.
Now her apartment is outfitted with state-of-theart security. Cameras, motion sensors, alarms.
And even now while he is locked up, she said, he calls her incessantly. She has gotten new phone numbers, but he found those out too.
She worries about the goodwill of her employer running out as an endless stream of court dates stretches before her.
This has been Blanchard’s life for nearly two years. Living, as she puts it, with her hand in the lion’s mouth.
“What do I do besides humble myself and hope he don’t kill me?” Blanchard asks.
Reforms affect domestic cases
After taking office in 2010, County Board President Preckwinkle focused on reducing the jail population by diverting nonviolent offenders from custody.
The next year, she began convening top court and law enforcement officials: Evans, state’s attorneys, the public defender and the sheriff. Preckwinkle turned to the Illinois Supreme Court when she felt her colleagues were not moving quickly enough. State Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke joined the meetings that would transform the county’s criminal courts.
Today the Cook County adult probation division has 102 employees and a budget of $9.3 million to provide pretrial services. Its mission is to divert nonviolent offenders into drug abuse and mental health treatment and monitor them while they await trial.
Judges now use a pretrial risk evaluation to help them decide whether to release or hold defendants. The Public Safety Assessment, developed by Arnold Ventures, a philanthropy run by retired Houston hedge fund billionaire John Arnold, gives
judges a two-page report that rates defendants’ prior convictions for certain violent crimes and missed court dates.
In the fall of 2017, Evans issued an order underscoring state laws that bond should not be more than what a defendant can pay. Only if the judge deems a person a danger to someone or a flight risk should he or she be held without bond.
Bonds began dropping for all types of crimes, and the jail population plummeted. It is now below 6,000, well under a 2013 peak of more than 10,000, records show.
But left out of those meetings led by Preckwinkle was any discussion about the protections domestic violence victims have under Illinois state law, according to three current or former public officials who took part in the sessions.
Illinois laws recognize the escalating and repetitious nature of domestic violence and the need to separate the parties involved to reduce further abuse, the Illinois Supreme Court held in the 1995 decision Calloway v. Kinkelaar. Domestic violence victims are a “specially protected class of individuals to whom statutorily mandated duties are owed,” that opinion stated.
These victims are most in peril after their attackers are charged, advocates say. “I can’t think of any other crime where the perpetrator goes back to the scene of the crime and sets up housekeeping with impunity,” said Joyce Coffee, who runs the Family Rescue nonprofit that works with Chicago police and the courts.
Chicago-Kent College of Law professor Katharine Baker described the special risks presented by domestic abusers. “What is curious about this class of perpetrators is they usually have one person in mind and they’re going right after that person. They present a profound danger not to the community at large, but to that one victim,” Baker said.
When court reforms were being considered and bails were lowered, “it would have been prescient and wise to say, we better make sure that makes sense for domestic violence victims,” Baker added.
Preckwinkle did not dispute the Tribune’s findings but said that she, Evans, Foxx and others “continue to meet regularly and review data produced from the courts in order to work together to continue these efforts and address any issues that arise. Let me be clear: One victim of domestic violence is one too many. We must always work to make sure we are balancing the rights of those who have been accused with those who have been victimized. Despite our strides, there is much more work to be done.”
The Arnold risk assessment used by judges sets out more restrictive guidelines for releasing people charged with certain violent offenses — murder, sexual assault and robbery — but not domestic violence. The assessment does not factor in prior arrests for domestic violence that did not result in convictions, nor does it take into account current or prior orders of protection and violation of those orders, according to Arnold Ventures communications manager David Hebert.
Prosecutors can object to the Arnold recommendations and present other facts.
Hebert told the Tribune that the philanthropy is now planning a major research initiative to examine whether the assessment tool should contain specific provisions for domestic violence cases, as well as DUIs and sexual abuse charges.
‘Your momma will have to move’
The case of Marcus Massenberg illustrates why domestic violence should be given special consideration in such assessments.
Massenberg stuffed a newspaper into a plastic gallon milk container filled with a clear liquid, lit it and set fire to his ex-girlfriend’s garage, according to a police report. Then he kicked down her door, barged into the home waving the burning carton and a car jack and threatened the woman and her mother, the records show.
“I’ll be back b---- and I’ll burn your house and your momma will have to move,” Massenberg yelled, according to police. He was arrested that evening of Nov. 30, 2017, near his girlfriend’s Far South Side home.
But Massenberg spent only a few nights in jail before Judge John Lyke Jr. released him on a personal recognizance bond, even though Massenberg had been arrested at least twice before over domestic incidents involving the same ex-girlfriend, records show.
In fact, Cook County judges released Massenberg from jail at least six times on personal recognizance bonds despite repeated alleged attacks against the woman and continually violating the terms of his release.
Massenberg told the Tribune that the charges against him are false. “As far as me doing the things that were said, not true,” he said. “But when a female that loves you, you hurt them or hurt their heart, they’ll try to hurt you any way they can. You got some people out there really beating on women, but as far as me, I am fighting the case. … The police report is what they’re trying to charge me with, but that ain’t true.”
Police say the attacks against his ex-girlfriend began around April 2017, when officers responded to the woman’s home for a domestic battery call reporting a man with a knife. Massenberg ran from officers, then used his body as a dead weight against an officer during the arrest and was charged with resisting a police officer, records show.
A few months later in July, Massenberg was taken into custody and charged with misdemeanor aggravated assault against the ex-girlfriend. He was released on a recognizance bond by Judge Geraldine D’Souza. The charges were dropped on Aug. 16, 2017.
After the alleged Molotov cocktail attack in November, Massenberg was hit with a felony weapons charge as well as misdemeanor aggravated assault and criminal damage to property counts. After the judge released him on personal recognizance, records show he violated terms of the bond just days later on Dec. 7, 2017.
He was ordered held without bail by Judge Caroline Kate Moreland, but within a few weeks, a judge again reduced his bail to a personal recognizance.
Massenberg returned to his ex-girlfriend’s home in February 2018 and broke out all the front windows, a police report said. He was charged with criminal damage to property.
The Arnold assessment rated Massenberg as highly likely to reoffend and fail to appear for future court hearings. But Judge Litricia Payne still released him on a personal recognizance bond.
Then in May, Massenberg circled back to his ex-girlfriend’s home and beat her again, according to police reports. He was charged with misdemeanor domestic battery.
This time, Judge Moreland held him on a $10,000 bond, meaning he had to put up some money to get released. At the same time, Judge Laura BertucciSmith held him without bail for violating the terms of his release in the previous felony case.
But it didn’t last.
In June, Bertucci-Smith reduced the bond from $10,000 to $5,000. And in September, Judge William Raines lifted the no-bond order.
Once again, he walked out of jail.