Our mission is to expose and remedy corruption in the Probate Court of Cook County, Illinois. We assist, educate and enlighten families of the dead, the dying, the disabled and the aged to better understand their rights in order to protect themselves from the excesses of the Probate Court of Cook County. ProbateSharks.com is dedicated to networking the human element of people to people. We join together in reforming the corrupt Cook County Probate Court system.
Editor's note: Your ProbateShark congratulates Judge Evans on his re-election as chief judge. We Sharks feel that the removal of Judge Kawamoto was a "right step" in the reformation of the Probate Division of Cook County, however much more correction is required.
A graphic example of the correction required is illustrated in the Estate of Alice R. Gore, a disabled 99 year old ward of the Probate Court of Cook County. After all of Alice's money was used up, somebody in the Probate Court must have ordered the nursing home to terminate Alice's life by deprivation. Since Alice's family took on financial responsibility of burying Alice, the family viewed a starved and dehydrated body who had most of her teeth extracted and all of her dental gold missing. For all practical purposes Alice R. Gore was a victim of "Elder Cleansing" and was of no further use financially to the Probate Court or the "Judicial-Nursing Home Complex". Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com
Preckwinkle pledges no new taxes, fees or fines
Good-news budget precedes elections
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Promising no new taxes, fees or fines in her upcoming budget proposal, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle credits the board’s “tough decisions and our hard work” over the last three years. (Nancy Stone, Chicago Tribune / September 11, 2013)
Just in time for campaign season, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle plans to propose a good-news budget for 2014.
"No taxes, no fines, no fees, no increases are part of our budget," Preckwinkle told the Tribune in a telephone interview Tuesday.
In late June, the county projected a $152 million financial shortfall for next year. Preckwinkle plans to fill about two-thirds of that hole by getting more public health system patients into the Medicaid program, assuming there's no negative effect if the federal government shutdown lingers. The Preckwinkle administration declined to offer specifics on how it will deal with the remainder of the budget gap, saying details will surface when the first-term county leader unveils her $3 billion budget Oct. 10.
Preckwinkle's budget speech to the County Board comes six weeks before the filing of nominating petitions starts for the 2014 elections. The board president's job and all 17 commissioner seats will be on the ballot. Preckwinkle plans to seek re-election, and no serious challengers have yet emerged.
"I'll tell you the truth," Preckwinkle said. "We told commissioners last year that we were going to try to do as much of the difficult stuff then as we possibly could so that we had a budget that was less problematic in terms of their re-election efforts."
Last year the county raised cigarette taxes by $1 a pack and approved new taxes on firearm sales, out-of-county purchases of big-ticket items, slot machines and video gambling terminals. Those moves, along with modest fee increases for permits and morgue documents, were designed to raise nearly $42 million.
Collections of the out-of-county tax have been suspended pending the outcome of a court case. The gambling machine and gun taxes also have been challenged in court.
The county also hoped to get more money this year from the federal government by enrolling additional people in Medicaid as part of President Barack Obama's new health care program. Some of that money has yet to materialize because of a delay in processing applications, Budget Director Andrea Gibson said.
Although the Health and Hospitals System led by CEO Dr. Ram Raju expects to increase spending next year by $162 million to more than $1.1 billion, the amount covered through county taxes would decrease by $76 million, according to county budget documents.
The improved financial picture at the health system is mostly due to the county getting permission to do early enrollments in Obama's health care program. So far, 105,000 patients have applied, and the approval rate is running at 89 percent, officials said.
"We are enrolling in Medicaid a significant number of people who were already our patients, who used our services, but for whom we got no compensation for caring for them," Preckwinkle explained.
Public health spending accounts for a little more than a third of the budget. The other major area of spending is public safety, which includes the courts, jail and sheriff's department. The county also maintains a network of highways, keeps vital records and runs the property tax assessment and collection system.
During her first term, Preckwinkle has increased what she calls "targeted" taxes and fees, or those that further policy agendas like reducing tobacco use and encouraging in-county purchases. She also has laid off hundreds of workers and cut spending in other areas.
Those tax increases, plus budget cuts, allowed the county to eliminate the last remaining half-cent of the penny-on-the-dollar sales tax hike imposed under her one-term predecessor, Todd Stroger. Each half-penny in sales taxes equals about $220 million in revenue.
"For the last three years, we got the board to make difficult decisions," Preckwinkle said. "Each of them were tough budgets. Frankly, those tough decisions and our hard work paid off this year."
Once the budget is released, Finance Committee Chairman John Daley, D-Chicago, will set public hearing dates, and separately elected countywide officials — including the chief judge, sheriff, state's attorney, circuit court clerk, county clerk, recorder of deeds and assessor — will weigh in. Final approval likely will come in November, before the start of the county's budget year Dec. 1. hdardick@tribune.com Twitter @ReporterHal
Elder Justice Center To Help Seniors Navigate Court System
WBBM Newsradio's Craig Dellimore
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CHICAGO (CBS) – Senior citizens in Cook County who need help navigating the court system, or fighting fraud and abuse, now have one place to turn for information.
WBBM Newsradio Political Editor Craig Dellimore reports the Cook County Elder Justice Center is the brainchild of Chief Judge Timothy Evans, and is located on the lower level of the Daley Center.
Presiding Judge Patricia Banks said volunteers and staff at the center can answer questions about financial exploitation, scams, and the like.
“We don’t give legal advice,” she said. “No legal advice, or legal representation; but we do want seniors who have issues, who have questions about the court system, who have questions about paperwork that they might have that they don’t quite understand – we welcome them to come in. To the extent that we can help them, fine. If we can’t help them, we’re going to refer them to someone who can.”
Banks said she and Evans noticed seniors have become a growing part of the court system.
“They’re living longer, and they’re in need … because of all types of legal issues: consumer issues, the scams, we have also elder abuse and neglect,” she said. “That’s a very big issue, because of elder abuse, and neglect, and financial exploitation, we’re hearing stories everyday about seniors.”
The services are for those age 60 and over. The center has two full-time staff members, and several volunteers, including law students and social work interns.
Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans refused Friday to transfer a convicted rapist’s post-conviction appeal to another county over concerns that judges here might have potential conflicts of interest because former Mayor Richard M. Daley and an Illinois appellate judge are on the witness list.
Evans said he will instead take steps to ensure that any judge who hears Stanley Wrice’s case will not have worked for Daley when he was the Cook County state’s attorney or worked with the other witness, Bertina Lampkin, when she was a prosecutor and a criminal court judge.
“We want to make certain the public has the some confidence in the administration of justice here,” Evans said, adding: “I feel we can find a judge who can be impartial.”
Last month, Judge Evelyn Clay recused herself from Wrice’s case, saying she has a potential conflict of interest that she could not disclose. She would only reveal that “this court knows some of the parties involved.”
But Wrice’s attorneys said the only logical inference they could draw was that Daley and Lampkin posed potential conflicts of interest for Clay as witnesses.
Daley was the Cook County state’s attorney when Wrice was convicted in 1983. Lampkin was a prosecutor on the case. Lampkin later served as a judge in the Cook County Criminal Court building with Clay.
Clay had previously ruled in Wrice’s favor, ordering a Sept. 23 evidentiary hearing after finding he “successfully established a substantial showing of actual innocence.”
Daley and Lampkin were then subpoenaed in July to testify at the hearing for Wrice, who is seeking a new trial. But the hearing was postponed when Clay stepped down from the case, which she had presided over since 2007.
Wrice, 59, claims police tortured him into giving a false confession to a 1982 gang rape. He says detectives working for disgraced Cmdr. Jon Burge carried out the interrogation. Burge is now in federal prison for perjury in connection with his testimony in a civil case involving allegations that he and colleagues tortured suspects.
Wrice’s bid to overturn his 100-year sentence received a boost from Northwestern University students working with David Protess of the Chicago Innocence Project. The students obtained a sworn statement from witness Bobby Joe Williams, who recanted his trial testimony that Wrice was involved in the 1982 rape.
On Friday, Jennifer Bonjean, a Brooklyn attorney representing Wrice, urged Evans to change the venue of her client’s hearing to another county — where the judges would not have a potential conflict over relationships with Daley and Lampkin.
“Justice delayed is justice denied,” she said, adding: “prison is not a fun place for someone who is [almost] 60.”
But Assistant Cook County Special Prosecutor Brian Stefanich objected, saying: “Judges in this building can be fair and impartial.”
Evans forged a compromise, excluding judges who were once employed by the Cook County state’s attorney’s office between 1974 and 1989 — the periods when Daley and Lampkin had worked there. He also excluded judges who served in the criminal division of the Cook County court system between 1989 and 2009, when Lampkin was a criminal court judge there. Finally, he excluded judges with fewer than five years’ experience.
Evans ordered the Cook County clerk of court to select a new judge randomly from the remaining pool of judges by Oct. 3.
Email: fmain@suntimes.com
Editorial: Illinois Supreme Court, help Cook County
Backlog of cases, jail overcrowding cheat defendants, crime victims and taxpayers
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Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle presides over board meeting in Chicago. (Nancy Stone, Chicago Tribune / September 4, 2013)
When a backlog of criminal cases accumulated in New York City, court officials put a bulldog in charge: State Supreme Court Justice Patricia DiMango. In less than a year, she has turned a sluggish system into a fair but efficient assembly line of justice, disposing of hundreds of cases that had lingered in Bronx courts for two years or more.
That's precisely the outcome Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle hopes to achieve in her latest effort to reduce the case backlog in Cook County. Impatient with Chief Judge Timothy Evans' hands-off approach to a slow-moving court system, Preckwinkle in a Sept. 12 letter to the Illinois Supreme Court asks for help:
"During my tenure, I have been disheartened to discover that our County's administration of justice is not in accordance with the standards the residents of the State of Illinois both deserve and are entitled to under the law," she writes. "In many aspects, Cook County is far behind many of our sister counties in the administration of court services."
Specifically, she wants the Supreme Court to assign a judge from outside Cook County to help clear the backlog of criminal cases, some of which have been meandering through the system for years. Preckwinkle also wants a member of the Supreme Court to oversee a commission that would make recommendations toward long-term solutions.
Cook County's case backlog and dangerously overcrowded jail aren't new problems. What is new is a County Board president taking an evidence-based step to involve the Supreme Court, which holds administrative and supervisory authority over Cook County's courts.
The Supreme Court hasn't said whether it will intervene. We hope it does.
As we outlined in an Aug. 29 editorial ("Judge Evans, be an enforcer"), Evans, who has served as chief judge since 2001, hasn't made the case backlog a priority: The chief judge has made some creative reforms and has generally sound priorities. But what's sorely missing is a sense of urgency. He needs to be the enforcer on his judges; his judges need to be the enforcers in their courtrooms. For starters, those judges all need to put in a full day's work.
Evans doesn't lean on his judges to be more efficient. He prefers to let justice unfold at its own pace and blames prosecutors and defense attorneys for delaying cases.
That laissez faire leadership style is unfair to defendants, crime victims and taxpayers.
Evans also blames budgetary restraints for his slow-moving system. But as Preckwinkle points out in her letter to the Supreme Court, the assignment of five additional judges to the criminal courts hasn't reduced the backlog. Money won't solve this problem.
It's time for more aggressive action. That means Supreme Court intervention — and soon.
Evans might want to write off Preckwinkle's criticism as politically motivated. Their friction goes way back. When Evans served as a Chicago alderman, Preckwinkle ran against him three times and beat him in 1991.
But that's irrelevant. The statistical record on jail population and caseload inefficiency speaks for itself. More than 300 jail inmates have been waiting at least five years for their cases to conclude, according to Sheriff Tom Dart. Thousands more have been in jail for six months to five years while their cases lollygag through Evans' system. From 2007 to 2011, the jail served an average of 1,246 more inmates per day than in the previous five years. That costs taxpayers, as Preckwinkle often says, $143 per inmate each day.
We appreciate Preckwinkle's outreach to the Supreme Court. It's risky to stick your nose into a fellow elected official's jurisdiction. Most politicians are content to look away: It's his court. It's his system.
But this issue is too important to ignore.
Justices of the Illinois Supreme Court: Use your authority to appoint an outside judge. And please, choose a bulldog. Justice delayed is, yes, justice denied.
Circuit Court of Cook County Chief Judge Timothy C. Evans recently was elected to a fifth term as chief judge by an overwhelming majority of circuit judges. His new three-year term will begin December 2, 2013. The results were announced by Judge Raymond L. Jagielski , chair of the Judicial Election Committee, who said Evans ran for re-election unopposed. Other committee members included: Judge Mary Ellen Coghlan, Judge Lynn M. Egan, Judge Marya Nega, Judge Leida J. Gonzalez Santiago, Judge Jane Louise Stuart, Judge Shelley Sutker-Dermer, and Judge E. Kenneth Wright, Jr.
According to Jagielski, Evans received 232 votes of 239 votes – seven were deemed spoiled. Evans is responsible for the operation of circuit court’s 10 divisions and six geographic districts, which has an annual budget of $135 million. There are 14 non-judicial offices including probation and other court-related services.
Evans serves as the Chief Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County, the largest of the 23 judicial circuits in Illinois and also one of the largest unified court systems in the world. More than 1.5 million cases are filed annually in the Circuit Court of Cook County, which serves Cook County=s 5.1 million residents.
Evans, the first African American chief judge, was elected in 2001 with a unanimous vote, and has been re-elected for successive three-years terms since then. He is the fourth chief judge in the court’s history. He is credited with bringing innovative and compassionate changes to the court, including changes to the bail setting process, a new domestic violence courthouse, and court-wide divisions that hear only domestic violence and elder law matters. He also has expanded the use of treatment courts to deal with mental health treatment. Only the fourth person to serve as Chief Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County, he also is the first African American to serve in the position.
During his tenure as Chief Judge, Evans has brought sweeping reforms to the court that are both innovative and compassionate. His efforts include critical changes to the bail setting process, a new Domestic Violence Courthouse, and the creation of the two court-wide divisions dedicated to hearing only domestic violence matters and elder law matters, he also has significantly expanded the use of specialty/treatment courts dedicated to mental health treatment, veterans support, drug treatment, and support to persons charged with prostitution.
During Evans’ tenure, according to court officials, there has been an unparalleled growth in free legal services for low-income, self-represented litigants, including a free mediation program to help homeowners facing foreclosure. Also, the court’s national reputation for its highly effective alternatives to incarceration for young people in trouble continues to grow.
Evans also has expanded court services to children with innovative drop-off child care that provides a safe, court-based haven for children whose parents or guardians are attending court.
Throughout his career, Chief Judge Evans has been an outspoken voice for equal opportunities for women and minorities. At the court’s executive level, in particular, he has championed excellence and diversity. He has appointed 14 of the 17 division and district presiding judges, and half of those appointments have been women, minorities, or both.
Evans is a 1965 graduate of the University of Illinois. He received his J.D. from The John Marshall Law School, Chicago, Illinois, in 1969.
Upon graduation from John Marshall, Chief Judge Evans entered local city government in 1969 when he joined the City of Chicago’s Law Department as an assistant corporation counsel. He later joined the city’s Department of Investigations, rising to deputy commissioner. In 1973, he was elected to the Chicago City Council representing the 4th Ward, a position he held for 18 years while maintaining a private practice.
With the election of Harold Washington as mayor of Chicago in 1983, Evans became the city council floor leader. He also chaired several major city council committees, among them finance, budget and health.
In 1992, Evans won election to the Cook County judiciary as a circuit judge. Within three years of joining the court, he was appointed the presiding judge of the Domestic Relations Division. Five years later in 2000, he was appointed presiding judge of the Law Division where he served until his election as Chief Judge.
He has been honored with dozens of distinguished service and humanitarian awards, and has had academic scholarships established in his name. In 2009, he became the first judge from Illinois to receive the William H. Rehnquist Award for Judicial Excellence from the National Center for State Courts. The award is one of the most prestigious judicial honors in the country and has been presented annually since 1996 by the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
In January 2010, he was named by the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin as one of the “10 Attorneys Who Raised The Bar Over the Last Decade.”
Cook County judges to choose chief in Monday's election
William Maddux challenges incumbent Timothy Evans, who hasn't faced opposition since elected in 2001
September 12, 2010|By Matthew Walberg, Tribune reporter
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After he was first elected chief judge of Cook County Circuit Court in 2001, Timothy Evans appointed Judge William Maddux as head of the powerful Law Division, arguably the second most important post in the court system.
Now, nine years later, Maddux is posing the first challenge to Evans' reign. The county's 268 elected circuit judges will cast secret ballots in the election Monday.
In a telephone interview last week, Maddux said he decided to try to unseat Evans because of "just a general feeling for the need for a change, just generalities, management style, differences of opinion."
But when pressed, Maddux cited Evans' handling of the discipline of a handful of judges who were transferred to other assignments and paired with mentors after a television report alleged they used work time for personal business.
Maddux said Evans should not have publicly announced their transfer without talking to them first.
"The biggest problem is what I call throwing people under the bus," he said Friday. "He didn't even talk to them. In fact, his secretary called them. At the very least, you check into what they have to say before you discipline them."
But Evans, also reached by telephone last week, said he understood Maddux's bid had to do instead with his displeasure over Evans' handling of a June golf outing sponsored by two Chicago law firms.
"It was my opposing a golf outing that he and some of the other judges had been invited to," Evans said. "The golf outing was being sponsored by lawyers who regularly appear before those judges in the Law Division. It was supposed to have free golf, fancy dinners, all those things."
After he became aware of the event, Evans said, he sent out a letter to all the judges, reminding them that they have a duty to avoid any appearance of impropriety.
"In retrospect, he was probably right," Maddux said. "But a press release to the public? C'mon. Again, he did this, of course, without talking to anybody. And you bet I have trouble with that kind of management."
Maddux said he doesn't regret nominating Evans for the role of chief judge but said that he has sensed Evans' drive and motivation have tailed off in recent years.
Maddux, best known in recent years for successfully challenging a state law that barred judges from running for retention after age 75, said he believes that the chief judge should be limited to two terms and pledged to serve no more than that.
Evans, 67, replied that experience is critical in the post.
At stake is the management of one of the largest court systems in the country with an annual budget of about $200 million and oversight of 420 judges — including appointed associate judges — their staff, the civil and criminal courts, juvenile justice as well as court reporters and the probation department.
Retired Cook County Judge Daniel Locallo said he believed Maddux would be a good change of direction for the court, saying that a longtime complaint against Evans by other judges is that he is frequently unavailable to help them.
"They ask Evans to make a decision or request something, and he gets to it when he thinks it's the right time to get to it," Locallo said. "The point is that Bill (Maddux) is there. I worked under him in the Law Division. He's there, he's minding the store."
But Circuit Judge William Hooks, who is assigned to the Criminal Courts Building, disagreed, crediting Evans for bringing increased diversity to the bench and introducing innovative programs such as specialized courts that focus on treating the mentally ill and military veterans.
"He is viewed by many of us as an example of what we would like to be down the road," Hook said.
An important election in Cook County looms next month, but you don't get to vote in it. The 268 circuit judges in the court system do. They will choose the chief judge, the person who oversees the operations of one of the largest court systems in the world.
The judges will pick their boss by secret ballot Sept. 10.
What's at stake? The future of a court system that has a profound impact on thousands of lives.
Timothy Evans, the former Chicago alderman and candidate for mayor, has served as chief judge since 2001 and he's seeking another three-year term. He easily dispatched another judge who challenged him in 2010, and he doesn't appear to face any competition this year.
We wish, though, that there were a real election, a real debate, because there are real concerns about the operation of this court system.
More than 300 Cook County Jail inmates have been waitingat least five yearsfor their cases to conclude, according to Sheriff Tom Dart. Thousands of defendants have been in jail for six months to five years while their cases lollygag through the system. Last week, a 62-year-old man died of natural causes in his jail cell while he awaited sentencing for a 2007 murder.
It's not just the criminal courts that face delays. There are issues with the civil courts too. Ask anyone who regularly deals with the court system. It's a long, expensive haul from start to finish.
Other problems persist in Cook County's legal system: technology from the Stone Age, resistance to stricter judicial oversight, disputes over the proper use of electronic monitoring of defendants and a continuously overcrowded jail.
These have been issues for decades in the courts. We've seen from experience that when the chief judge takes an easygoing attitude toward court efficiency, cases drag. When the chief judge puts real pressure on the judges in the courtrooms — produce or you'll be transferred to nowhere land — the pace improves.
We admire Evans as a jurist and a civic leader. He does, though, fall on the easygoing side. The judges who let cases languish, who take long lunch breaks then close their courtrooms early in the afternoon, they don't fear him. They have cushy jobs.
That's not fair to the people who are harmed when the court system crawls to conclusion. It's not fair to the defendants, to the victims, to everyone who turns to the civil system to resolve disputes. It's particularly unfair to young people in the juvenile courts.
Evans acknowledges shortcomings in the system, but as he told us in a recent meeting, he believes justice is better served by allowing cases to unfold at their own pace rather than be rushed. He distributes much of the blame for delays on prosecutors and defense attorneys who often ask for continuances.
Dart is responsible for the jail population, Evans says. The Illinois Supreme Court is holding up the county's progress toward electronic case filing, he says. Cook County will get cameras in the courtrooms ... when the Supreme Court finally gives its blessing, he says.
Evans says he has developed a more transparent system to track which judges manage their caseloads efficiently. But he also trusts his judges, who he notes are independently elected, to run their own dockets.
On Wednesday, he released to us records that show significant differences in the case clearance rates of his judges. That data release is to his credit — now let's see how he handles those judges who clearly are identified as laggards.
The chief judge has made some creative reforms and has generally sound priorities. But what's sorely missing is a sense of urgency. He needs to be the enforcer on his judges; his judges need to be the enforcers in their courtrooms. For starters, those judges all need to put in a full day's work.
That's why we wish there were a vigorous, public election for this office. We'd like to see Evans pushed to defend the pace and progress of the courts. These persistent problems deserve more concerted attention.
Other counties long ago implemented electronic case filing and video conferencing of bond hearings, to improve cost and efficiency. Here, we're still paper and in-person. Even for brief court appearances, inmates have to be transferred between their cells and courthouses, at significant expense. Evans says defendants have a right to confront their accusers; other court leaders say video conferencing has worked extremely well, without infringing on defendants' rights.
Some judges work slowly, some simply don't have the legal ability to do the job. They tend to be protected, though. Other counties put data on the Internet that show how well judges handle their caseloads. We encourage Evans to post online the caseload records he delivered to us. Let the public know what's going on.
Evans has been a solid administrator of the day-to-day management of the massive court system. He is likable, open-minded and fair. But he has been hands-off when it comes to his judges. They enjoy that. No wonder they'll re-elect him.
We urge Judge Evans to act as though he faces the political fight of his life. Be impatient. Make real, tangible change. Enough talking, meeting and studying. Force change.
KawamotoDragon.com
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Reporting Craig Dellimore
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