In a court system that is taking longer than ever to resolve murder cases, the Tribune found the pace of justice can depend on who is wearing the robe.
The Leighton Criminal Court Building houses an enormous legal machine with dozens of interlocking parts. The machinery can get jammed at every stage of a case and often does. For years, two veteran Cook County judges presided over fifth-floor courtrooms just down the hall from each other, sitting on identical carved wooden benches and presiding over identical types of cases.
Or they can do none of those things, and face no apparent repercussions, while cases limp along month after month, year after year. “Many people talk about there being one criminal justice system ,” Public Defender Sharone Mitchell Jr. once told county officials. “Actually, there are probably hundreds of criminal justice systems.”
Down the hall, Judge Gaughan moved his docket with lightning speed, barking orders at weary lawyers. He set tight deadlines, gave attorneys explicit tasks, and threatened to hold anyone and everyone in contempt if they didn’t comply. Before even being asked, a prosecutor gave Gaughan a rundown of her efforts to figure out what went wrong — two trips to print out the master list of officers expected to show up that day, phone calls with a sergeant and lieutenant in the district where the missing officer was assigned, and an attempt to reach a different sergeant who had apparently excused the court appearance because of the previously scheduled day off.
Judge Vincent Gaughan, shown on the bench in 2016, ran his docket at lightning speed in hearings observed by Tribune reporters.The day before, down the hall in Flood’s courtroom, the atmosphere was far less tense. It was “only by chance” that they found out about the possible murder weapon, right before the four-year-old case was supposed to go to trial, Clancy said. HeProsecutor Michelle Spizzirri said she believed she could get the results more quickly than usual, though she did not give a specific timeline, and Flood did not request one. “Let the jurors go,” he told the courtroom deputy.
And so they slogged through the tedious process of trying to figure out, between the courtroom schedule, the defense attorneys’ schedule and the prosecutor’s schedule, when they might actually be able to set a trial. Not one judge answered. A handful spoke to reporters but would not go on the record. Generally, they acknowledged that judges should exercise power to move cases along, but said their caseloads can be crushing and expressed frustration with what they saw as a lack of urgency from the attorneys in front of them.
Apart from the systemic problems that contribute to stalled-out cases, some delays, attorneys speculate, are on purpose: Prosecutors drag things out to pressure someone to plead on a defective case, or the defense stalls in hopes that the evidence will weaken or that burned-out prosecutors will offer a sweetheart deal.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, who has long railed against the delays that keep people in his jail for years on end, recalled noticing the power of judges during his days as a prosecutor in the early 1990s. Some were brisk and hardworking; others presided over courtrooms where “nothing ever got done.”
Another common refrain: Judges accept delays because if they rush a case along, an appellate court might later reverse a conviction for violating a defendant’s rights. But a Tribune analysis of higher-court opinions on murder cases since 2015 found that Gaughan, one of the fastest judges in the county, had not been reversed on that basis.
With that caveat in mind, the Tribune sought to assess the relative efficiency of judges at the county’s main courthouse in Little Village by computing the median length of murder cases from an early-stage hearing called an arraignment to their conclusions.included all judges who were active in 2022 and had handled at least 20 murder cases since 2015.
But practically speaking, it is hard to stop the person in the black robe from doing precisely what they want to. And for the most part, a judge can keep their robe for as long as they want, once they get it. And in 2017, in a display of the power of his office, he muscled through significant changes to the county’s bail practices — not only mandating that judges set affordable bonds but bringing in entirely new judges, which helped ensure judges’ old habits wouldn’t limit progress.A chief judge holds significant sway over a court’s policy, and under state court rules, Evans can reassign judges who aren’t performing up to standards.
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