By NINA BURLEIGH
Grey lord: the aftermath
As federal prosecutors make big headlines turning corruption out of Chicago's commodities pits this summer, Cook County's legal community is letting out a very quiet sigh of relief. Gone are the daily news accounts from judges' trials with their embarrassing testimony of lawyers and cops who served as "bagmen." In their wake, an almost protective silence has fallen.
Some reforms have been enacted, but many major suggestions are still just that. Secrecy remains the rule in disciplinary matters. A mind-your-own-business attitude lingers within the legal profession. Inefficiency and overcrowding in Cook County Circuit Court, the nation's largest court system, are being valiantly attacked but barely dented by administrators. And most important, according to a reform panel, judges still depend upon politics for their judgeships. These problems are what gave rise to the corruption exposed in the federal Greylord investigation. After the fact they were identified by the Special Commission on the Administration of Justice in Cook County.
In April this year, an Illinois Supreme Court "Blue Ribbon Committee" released its final report on the functions and operation of the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (ARDC) with recommendations for change. The committee quoted Illinois Supreme Court Justice William G. Clark: "Illinois has one of the fairest and finest lawyer disciplinary systems in the United States." The committee agreed, then added: "But there is always room for improvement."
Cynics might say that is the understatement of the decade. Federal probers netted 93 lawyers, judges, cops and court personnel in their Greylord investigation, begun in the late 1970s, for courtroom hustling and bribetaking. The ARDC, created by the Supreme Court in 1978 to investigate wrongdoing by lawyers, had caught wind of none of the systemic corruption before the first indictments in 1983. The Supreme Court had to create a new rule to deal with the flood of revelations: Either it or the ARDC could remove lawyers from practice on their own motion — without hearing — on probable cause such as indictment or courtroom revelations.
The ARDC and its judiciary counterpart, the Judicial Inquiry Board, have caught the brunt of the blame for not discovering the corruption before Greylord did. Where were they, the public, the media, the judges and lawyers asked, while lawyers and judges turned the county's courts into criminal enterprises?
The Cook County Special Commission, which was established in 1984 by the circuit court of Cook County, determined that the ARDC and the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board need to be "proactive" rather than reactive in detecting misconduct. In at least one case, this has been done. New First Municipal district Presiding Judge Donald P. O'Connell has asked the ARDC to actively seek out and remove "hustlers" from traffic court.
ARDC Administrator John O'Malley, appointed in 1988 after the bulk of the Greylord scandal had passed, points out that U.S. Atty. Dan Webb commended the ARDC in a public letter for its cooperation in the Greylord investigation. O'Malley also points to the agency's limited role. "We feel it is our obligation, when we have evidence of criminal activity, to bring that to the attention of the proper authorities. I think it is not fair to suggest that the commission has been in any way inactive in the past. It is our responsibility to investigate charges of misconduct. It is the responsibility of other agencies to investigate crimes."
O'Malley always speaks according to the rules. The ARDC is not charged with initiating investigations on its own motion. It needs a consumer or attorney to first bring charges. And in Cook County's justice-for-money system, no one involved wanted to change things, and those on the sidelines stayed silent.
The ARDC has been criticized for its closed-door approach to discipline in which complaints against lawyers are secret until they are resolved by the Supreme Court. The few public members on the ARDC were added after Greylord broke, but they sit on the very top level and are not privy to the thousands of complaints that come into the office until after the complaints are whittled down through the three-tiered hearing process.
While the ARDC is secretive, the Judicial Inquiry Board is a tiny agency without the resources for public relations. It routinely stonewalls questions about its activities. Complaints against judges aren't made public until the judge is actual found guilty of wrongdoing. The Judicial Inquiry Board was established by the 1970 Illinois Constitution to act like a prosecutor, investigating charges of wrongdoing by judges. It has the power to initiate complaints. It also has nonlawyer members. A special tribunal of judges, the Illinois Courts Commission, was also established by the Constitution to adjudicate complaints deemed valid by the Inquiry Board. A miniscule number of judges have been disciplined by this two-tier system.
The primary concern of the ARDC and the Judicial Inquiry Board appears to be protecting innocent lawyers and judges at all costs. They weigh the possible damage that might be caused by an unfairly tarred reputation against the possible damage an unscrupulous lawyer or judge can do, and give greater weight to the former.
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The Cook County Special Commission concluded that regulatory agencies and public scrutiny alone are not at all the answer to controlling the giant Cook County Court System. Its primary recommendation is that the chief judge of County establish an Office of Inspector General to patrol the workings of the entire court system, including lawyers, clerks and bailiffs. That suggestion has not been headed.
"The inspector general is a post desperately needed," said Jerold S. Solovy, the Chicago lawyer who chaired the Special Commission. "But the County Board would have to appropriate money, and they said they had no money and that it was prerogative of the circuit court. It is so desperately needed because the personnel in the court system are under the control of too many different bodies. The bailiffs report to the sheriff, the clerks report to the circuit clerk; the judge in many ways is powerless to control these people."
While the judge is powerless to control many court personnel, Greylord revealed that in corrupt courtrooms, all personnel worked in concert to fill the bribery coffers, which were occasionally as blatant as coffee cans under the court clerk's desk.
This "culture of corruption" allowed the Greylord scandal to evolve. The implications of this culture have not been lost on those trying to make sense of systemic criminality in the courts. Upon leaving office in 1981, former U.S. Atty. Thomas P. Sullivan, the U.S. attorney at the helm when the Greylord probe was initiated, stated: "There seems to be in Chicago and the surrounding areas a pervasive, deep-seated lack of honesty at all levels of government and business. I do not know whether it is worse here than elsewhere, but I do know that public and private corruption is commonplace in our city."
So commonplace was the corruption that even those not actively involved in it were able to see it going on. In one Greylord judge's courtroom, clerks admonished bribers — on behalf of the judge — to please not pass money in front of the courtroom window. Yet it took a downstater, then-Circuit Judge Brocton Lockwood, sitting in traffic court to report what was going on. He was on assignment to Cook County to help with overcrowded calendars in traffic court.
The Illinois Supreme Court last spring came down hard on the problem of unscrupulous intraprofessional loyalty. It suspended attorney James H. Himmel for one year. His infraction: failing to turn in another attorney for stealing money from a client. Himmel did not act in concert with the crooked attorney. He was merely made aware of the situation when the injured client hired him. According to the ARDC, complaints made by attorneys have increased dramatically since the ruling.
The underlying logic in Himmel's case is not new. The Illinois Code of Professional Responsibility for lawyers has always
Attorney discipline: recommendations for changes
Handling complaints about alleged lawyer misconduct is the purpose of the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (ARDC). Following the egregious misconduct by lawyers exposed in the federal Greylord investigation, the Illinois Supreme Court appointed the Blue Ribbon Committee to Study the Functions and Operation of the ARDC. The committee reported in April to the court, making recommendations for improvement.
Currently the ARDC administrator initiates investigations of attorney misconduct on his initiative or on receipt of a complaint. The final decision rests with the Supreme Court. In between, there is a three-tiered structure. Three members of the ARDC's Inquiry Board (all ARDC-appointed lawyers) determine whether there is reason to file a formal complaint. If so, the complaint is heard by three members of the commissions' Hearing Board (all ARDC-appointed attorneys). If either party takes exception to its finding, the matter is reviewed by the nine-member Review Board (all attorneys appointed by the Supreme Court). The activities at all three levels are confidential. The final disposition rests with the Supreme Court, which handles it like any other case. This step is public.
To get the process more out in the open, the committee recommends including non-lawyer members on the Inquiry Board from which the inquiry panels are chosen. The public members would constitute a minority of the board. The committee suggests further that after review of this change, the Supreme Court add nonlawyers to the Hearing Board.
The committee recommends that proceedings should be made public after a formal charge is filed. The committee said, "Lawyers receive more due process protection at the investigatory stage than virtually any other litigants — certainly more than criminal defendants."
Other recommendations touched a wide range of concerns: begin programs to educate the public and the profession about the disciplinary system; limit terms on the various ARDC panels to two; change Supreme Court rules to provide that "complainants should be absolutely immune from civil liability for communications made to the disciplinary agency."
Recommendations made to speed up the process include the commissioners themselves (lawyers and nonlawyers are the commissioners who constitute the ARDC itself) assuming "more direct responsibility for elimination of delay in the system." About delays in Supreme Court deliberations the committee concluded that "more deference should be given to the [ARDC's] proceedings. . . . As things now stand, respondents believe there will be a better break from the Court on the highly subjective decision of what is the proper sanction."
The committee, which used as a starting point the formal report (October 1984) of the Standing Committee on Professional Discipline of the American Bar Association, noted that a number of those suggestions are in place.
Underlying the blue ribbon committee's report seemed to be the feeling that the present system is a good one that can be made better and that failure to do so might result in legislative attempts to improve the system.
P. Mark Siebert and Pat Harrison
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required lawyers to report wrongdoing. But the Himmel decision is the first to apply sanctions for disregarding that rule The Himmel decision has drawn howls of outrage from some prominent members of the bar. Jerome Mirza, immediate pasl president of the Illinois State Bar Association, has said the ruling impinges on the attorney-client relationship by requiring the attorney to divulge a client's problem to outside sources. "I must concede there is a possibility that mass reporting could reveal some potential or current Greylord-type situations," Mirza said. "But if people are going to be taking money, they will find ways to do it. And they will know which people to do it with. If the apple is bad, the apple is bad. You are not going to change that. I have to look at the side of the Himmel decision that adversely affects the whole profession. I think to make every lawyer report every other lawyer for every possible transgression is not good for the profession."
Chicago Bar Association President Chester Blair was less harsh about the ruling, although he too doesn't believe it will change the "bad apples." Said Blair: "Law is a hard business. It takes a lot of work to win in a courtroom. Lawyers are so wrapped up in their own bailiwicks they do not get involved in the problems of other lawyers. There is an atmosphere of mind your own business. Lawyers can't just turn a cold shoulder to impropriety. It's kind of like the person on the street seeing a crime. He is expected to be a good citizen and call the police. Lawyers are in the same position now."
But rules won't remove underlying immorality, Blair said. "We believe rules will change things. That is not so. It has to be within the heart of the individual, and that has to start in the schools — not in the law schools but in the elementary schools."
The Cook County Special Commission recommended that the bar associations try to change the legal culture themselves instead of waiting, as Blair suggested, for early training to work. "The major bar associations must become more actively involved in monitoring the practice of law and enforcing the profession's ethical standards in areas of practice where wrongdoing is most likely to occur," the commission wrote in its final report. So far, the bars have not made any major changes in their procedures aimed solely at rooting out or preventing corruption among members.
In the wake of the Greylord scandal, the Cook County court system has indeed changed. Two major political shifts have affected court personnel. James O'Grady in 1986 replaced long-time incumbent Richard Elrod in the sheriff's office, and some of Elrod's top officials have gone to jail for various corrupt activities (found in a different federal probe). Last year, Aurelia Pucinski replaced Morgan Finley in the clerk's office. Pucinski has been credited already with working to increase efficiency in recordkeeping. Finley has since been convicted (after still another federal investigation).
But carelessness in a massive urban system like Cook County's is hard to eradicate. As one top disciplinary official stated recently: "The purge is ending, but this remains an urban system. There is still the problem of alcoholism [on the bench and bar]. Sure there are the same problems out there. If not the same people, new guys with the same problems."
Said the Special Commission in its final report: "Inefficiency can create conditions that are conducive to corruption. Court delay, for example, encourages attorneys to engage in misconduct, such as bribing a clerk to have a case called early." And insiders, "those who frequently practice in the same courtroom before the same judges, . . . . develop informal ways of getting information. . . [which] creates the appearance that some lawyers or litigants are given special treatment."
Chief Judge Harry Comerford has tried to circumvent the return of insider groups of attorneys working with the judge in any one courtroom. "One of the reasons the Greylord situations existed was that people became entrenched and careless. We guard against entrenchment," Comerford said. Changes that has implemented include rotating judges and court personnel from courtroom to courtroom and requiring attorneys to sign into courtrooms and to be called to the bench by personnal only when they have a case. The latter attempts to minimize illicit contact between attorneys and court personnel.
To lighten the tremendous volume of minor traffic cases that fed the traffic court's hustling machine, Comerford has also contracted with Northwestern University's traffic safety school to offer traffic safety classes at city colleges as an alternative for traffic offenders. Started in the spring, up to 150,000 offenders a year are expected to opt for these $50 classes.
Many of the problems identified by the Cook County Special Commission have solutions that can be implemented by the
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Greylord indictments
On July 19, 1989, the Greylord scandal of Cook County courtrooms reached into the Statehouse. For over five years, those indicted in arguably the state's most infamous judicial corruption scandal were attorneys (53), judges (15), court clerks (4), deputy sheriffs (11), policemen (8) and one receiver/realtor. Now there's one state representative, James A. DeLeo (D-16, Chicago), who was indicted on one count of filing a false income tax statement. The indictment claims that when DeLeo filed his 1982 tax return he reported $19,448 in income but actually earned more. Bribes were not mentioned in the indictment. At the time, DeLeo was a coordinator in Cook County Traffic Court; in 1984 he was elected to the House.
DeLeo's indictment puts the total at 93. Of those indicted as of August 13, 82 were convicted (67 by plea); four were acquitted; four have cases pending; two died before trial or re-trial. One conviction was vacated and the indictment dismissed. (Unless otherwise noted, tax count refers to the felony charge of filing a false income tax statements.)
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courts, the bar associations or county officials. There is one problem, however, that only the legislature can resolve. And it isn't likely to act anytime soon.
According to the Special Commission and its top witnesses, a system of political favors laid the groundwork for the Greylord corruption. That system would be changed by merit selection of judges, the commission suggested. In urging what it calls "judicial independence," the Special Commission quoted statements by U.S. Arty. Anton R. Valukas: "We have heard time and time again in the course of Greylord prosecutions of situations where judges were contacted by persons with political clout, persons to whom they owed a favor, and asked to do something for them. And it is a short step . . . for a judge
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who has decided cases for political reasons to start deciding those cases for other poor motives." Those other poor motives could be as simple as a pair of box seats at Cubs games or a golf weekend, or as complex as the thousands of dollars in loans Judge Reginald Holzer secured from attorneys who practiced before him.
According to the testimony of Brocton Lockwood in one Greylord trial, many cases in traffic court were fixed as political favors, not for money. The supervising police officer for traffic courts would routinely grant favors to people with "political clout," Lockwood reported. "Everyday he would receive calls," Lockwood testified, "These were just favors that he had — half a dozen to a dozen cases every day to take care of for somebody. . . with some political influence."
Special Commission chairman Solovy said there is "no question" that merit selection of judges is the most important solution to prevent another stream of corruption from developing. "The whole siege of Greylord stemmed from introducing a system of politics into the judiciary," Solovy said. "Politicians view the judges they help elect as their special surrogates. Historically, they have wanted judges to do favors. It is a very easy step from favors to out-and-out corruption. That's why we feel we need a system of electing judges that has nothin to do with politics."□
Nina Burleigh is a freelance writer living in Chicago.
Judges
Deputy sheriffs
Police officers
Court clerks
Receiver/Realtor
Sources: The Special Commission on the Administration of Justice in Cook County, Final Report, September 1981 courtesy of Peter Manikas, executive director of the Criminal Justice Project of Cook County; Terry Hake, currently inspecter general for the Regional Transportation Authority (Chicago), and for three years and seven months an FBI special agent working undercover in the Greylord operation; Marie Dyson, an FBI special agent in Chicago, and Dan Gillogly, executive assistant U.S. attorney, Chicago.
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