Vol. 2, Issue 23: Debate Over Monetary Bond Hits a Stride

At Issue: Bond Reform in Chicago Has the County, Advocates in Agreement

With efforts to speed trials and reduce the jail population falling short—and a lawsuit challenging unaffordable bond levels in Cook County as unconstitutional—Sheriff Tom Dart has called for eliminating the cash-bond system.

Tom Dart (YouTube)

Instead of “tinkering...around the edges,” said Cara Smith, policy director for the sheriff’s office, “we’ve got to blow the system up and replace it with a system that is not dependent on wealth.”

Cook County is notorious for pretrial jail stays that can last months or even years. The county spends millions of dollars annually on lawsuits alleging inhumane conditions in its overcrowded jail; more than 200 federal lawsuits are currently pending, according to Injustice Watch.

Dart’s call came a day before the Cook County Board held a hearing on bail reform. District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Truman Morrison described Washington D.C.’s experience abolishing cash bail, stating that not a single judge there “would ever dream of returning to the dark, dysfunctional days of deciding personal freedom by dollar bills.”

In Washington D.C. and Kentucky, cash bail has been replaced by a risk assessment model in which only defendants deemed likely to flee or commit another crime are held for trial. In Kentucky, only 43 percent of jail inmates are awaiting trial—far below the national average of 60 percent. In Cook County, by contrast, 95 percent of jail inmates are awaiting trial or sentencing.

A new risk-assessment program for Cook County judges is intended to reduce reliance on bail, “but as long as we have cash bond, the risk assessment is not being looked at,” said Cook County Public Defender Amy Campanelli.

Amy Campenelli (YouTube)

Cook County judges ignored the risk assessment program’s recommendations in 85 percent of cases, according to a study released this summer by Dart’s office.

For a live-tweet account of the November 17 Cook County Board of Commissioners Criminal Justice Committee hearing on monetary bond, see this Storify from a City Bureau Documenter who attended the event.

ELECTRONIC MONITORING: In a series of articles on the topic, Injustice Watch reports that shifting from cash bail to risk assessment models does not lead to an increase in the number of suspects who commit new crimes or fail to appear for trial. The investigation also found that suspects of nonviolent crimes who cannot make bail in Cook County are more than four times as likely to be convicted—at least in part because prolonged detention increases pressure to plead guilty to crimes they have not committed.

While Cook County officials argue that funding for pretrial services is inadequate, Injustice Watch notes that other counties that have reduced their jail populations have covered the costs of increased pretrial services and saved millions of dollars in the process.

As Cook County increasingly relies on electronic monitoring to replace pretrial detention, Injustice Watch also reports that reform advocates “caution that judges are overusing electronic monitoring” for individuals who pose no threat to the public or risk of flight.

“Electronic monitoring is still pretrial detention—restricting the liberty of people who haven’t been convicted of anything,” said Sharlyn Grace, a policy fellow at the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice. “Electronic monitoring is just a way the criminal justice system has expanded. It is another form of pretrial punishment.”

Sharlyn Grace (ChiHackNight)

“In Washington, D.C., judges strive to limit the use of electronic monitoring even as the court system has moved away from requiring cash bail for release,” according to Injustice Watch.

NO-SHOW COPS: The Chicago Reader and the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute identify multiple factors contributing to long pretrial detentions in Cook County. One major issue: no-show police officers.

The Reader highlights the case of Jermaine Robinson, a 21-year-old college student with prior run-ins with the law who was working while attending school. Robinson was unable to post a $7,500 bond after being arrested when a gun was found in a house he was visiting. His case was repeatedly delayed for months as arresting officer Anthony Bruno failed to respond to summonses to testify.

When Bruno finally testified, the judge granted Robinson’s motion to quash his arrest, and the state dropped all charges—after he had spent four years in jail.

In 2005, a U.S. Justice Department study found that the Cook County court system suffered from “a legal culture that facilitates unnecessary delay in case processing,” according to the Reader. A major factor identified in the study was the repeated failure of police officers to appear in court. Police absenteeism, the report noted, “does not appear to generate any sanctioning.”

When asked by the Reader about investigations and consequences for officers who violate departmental policy—which prohibits officers from failing to report when called to court—a Chicago Police Department spokesperson declined to comment.

REFORM INITIATIVES: In August, U.S. Justice Department attorneys argued that the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution forbids “punishing people for their poverty” or enforcing “practices that incarcerate indigent individuals before trial solely because of their inability to pay.” Their statement came as they intervened in a court challenge to Georgia’s bail system brought by Equal Justice Under the Law, a group that has also challenged the money bail system in cities across the South.

The Chicago Community Bond Fund (CCBF) aims to “restore the presumption of innocence before trial” by assisting individuals who remain in jail solely because they cannot afford bail. In its first year, the group’s revolving fund provided $262,000 to post bail for 45 people from Cook County Jail. “Bail is essentially unfair and unjust,” the organization states, arguing that the reliance on money bail “undermines the very idea that safety should govern release and detention decisions.”

Former mayoral candidate Willie Wilson has bailed out 110 Cook County Jail inmates since September at a cost of $30,000. Last week, he hosted a Thanksgiving lunch for the beneficiaries, where they received counseling from pastors and $200 from Wilson to “help them get on their way,” the Chicago Tribune reports.

Bail is “a moral issue,” Wilson said. “It’s discrimination between the rich and poor.”

OTHER NEWS: Hundreds protested on the Magnificent Mile the day after Thanksgiving, denouncing the new police accountability agency established by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and demanding an elected body to govern the police department.

A year after the release of video showing Laquan McDonald’s shooting death, there is “a lot of reform in the air but not much on the ground yet,” comments Andy Shaw of the Better Government Association. He highlights key points from a recent forum on “Laquan’s Legacy.”

At the forum, Police Board President Lori Lightfoot made headlines by suggesting that the U.S. Attorney has closed its investigation into McDonald’s shooting and the subsequent cover-up.

In a retrospective, the Chicago Tribune reports that Chicago police officers complain of a “hostile climate” since the video’s release, which they say has affected morale and performance—leading to a decline in “proactive policing” and an increase in violence rates. However, civil rights attorney Craig Futterman points out that other cities have not seen surges in violence when they required street stops to meet the constitutional standard of reasonable suspicion.

Superintendent Eddie Johnson relieved a sergeant of his police powers following the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Kajuan Raye on November 23. Raye was fleeing after the officer stopped him as he waited for a bus. The sergeant claimed Raye turned and pointed a gun at him, but no weapon has been recovered. An autopsy showed Raye was shot in the back, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

At a press conference on November 29, Johnson urged residents to comment on CPD’s new use-of-force guidelines draft, with the public comment deadline extended to December 5. See City Bureau and the Invisible Institute’s Use of Force Tracker for a breakdown of the proposed guidelines and how they differ from previous policies.

(City Bureau)

A grand jury has been impaneled to hear evidence regarding a police cover-up of the shooting of Laquan McDonald. Special prosecutor Patricia Brown announced that subpoenas will be issued in the coming weeks. Superintendent Eddie Johnson has recommended firing seven officers for allegedly providing false accounts of the shooting. However, there has been no word on investigations into the role of top CPD officials who supported those false accounts, despite video evidence contradicting them.

More than 120 investigators and legal staff for the new Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) must complete four to six weeks of training and pass tests to qualify for their positions. The city has hired Thomas Kim, chief investigator for New York’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, as deputy chief administrator of COPA.

Meanwhile, lawyers for the Englewood Four—who were exonerated of rape and murder in 2011 after serving 16 years in prison—say they have uncovered an FBI report quoting a former Cook County prosecutor admitting that the four men were coerced into making false confessions by Chicago police.

As part of a federal civil rights investigation that followed the discovery of DNA evidence exonerating the men, Terrence Johnson of the State’s Attorney’s Office stated that he and Fabio Valentini—now one of outgoing State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez’s top deputies—knew that detectives “conspired to lie in court” to cover up misconduct and that the two prosecutors remained silent about it.

The Chicago Tribune recaps the story of Chicago homicide Detective Frank Laverty, who prevented a wrongful murder conviction by revealing the existence of CPD’s street files—and faced consequences for breaking the department’s code of silence.