Letters: Cook County's State's Attorney Eileen O'Neil Burke's policy ignores judges' judgment
Recently, Cook County's new state's attorney, Eileen O'Neil Burke, issued a policy instructing assistant state's attorneys to object anytime a judge orders an individual to be released on electronic monitoring when the state's attorney originally requested pretrial detention. Blanket policies such as this one fail to promote public safety and undermine due process and the presumption of innocence by ignoring judges' decisions and mitigating information provided by defense attorneys.
The Pretrial Fairness Act, which took effect in September 2023 and ended the use of money bond in Illinois, recognizes the foundational principle that every person is presumed innocent until they are proven guilty. Under Illinois' previous money bond system, judges made pretrial release and detention decisions in just a few minutes. Thus, judges had limited information about the allegations and how incarceration would impact the charged individual and their loved ones.
The Pretrial Fairness Act changed that. As a result, these critical hearings have dramatically increased in length. Loyola University found that the median hearing now takes between 10 to 20 minutes. That means the judges have more information at their disposal and they are now able to make more informed and considered pretrial release decisions.
O'Neil Burke's new policy disregards the individualized decisions of Cook County's judges about who should be released while their cases are pending and under what conditions. The policy also runs counter to years of data about the use of electronic monitoring in Cook County. The electronic monitoring program run by Pretrial Services has long monitored people facing serious cases, and research has shown that people on electronic monitoring have the same extremely low rates of re-arrest as people who are released without monitors.
The Cook County state's attorney is tasked with promoting public safety in our city. That won't come from doing away with the progress that has been made to evaluate each case individually on its own merits and instead to decide from on high what is right in every single case through a blanket order.
At a time when our democratic principles and institutions are under attack, it's more important than ever to stand up for bedrock constitutional rights — due process and the presumption of innocence.
O'Neil Burke's policy doesn't cut it.
— Erica Zunkel, clinical professor of law, University of Chicago Law School
Speed cameras' virtue
The Tribune Editorial Board's recent editorial 'Suburban speed cameras? Don't replicate Chicago's mistakes.' (April 7) does a great job pretending speed cameras contracts are more rife for abuse than any other government contract, while offering no constructive alternative solutions for dealing with the deadly crisis our region is facing from speeding motorists.
In fact, even a cursory review of the largest bribery scandals in recent Illinois government history reveals criminals know no bounds for the government revenue streams they are willing to manipulate for their own fortune. Such scandals have tapped into government-owned or -regulated revenue sources as diverse as electricity rates (the recent ComEd bribery scandal), tax appeals (Joe Berrios' reign at the Cook County assessor's office) and municipal revenue streams diverted from good uses such as in Dolton under Mayor Tiffany Henyard. Given the wide range of government agencies and municipalities that have proved vulnerable to criminal intentions, we must unfortunately conclude, 'If there is a will, there is a way,' for bad actors and not throw out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to implementing penal structures that make our communities safer.
Given the lifesaving outcomes speed cameras can produce, the societal benefits far outweigh any risk of criminal practice. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago analyzed traffic data from 101 speed camera zones in Chicago between 2015 and 2017 and found that the cameras reduced severe and fatal crashes by 15% and all injury crashes by 12%. Furthermore, a 2015 study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that in Montgomery County, Maryland, a setting similar to suburban Cook County outside Washington, speed cameras reduced the likelihood of fatal or incapacitating injuries by 19% and of drivers going more than 10 mph over the speed limit by 59%.
According to Illinois law, municipalities are required to use speed camera revenues only on public safety purposes, as well as constructing and maintaining public safety infrastructure. Therefore, what the editorial board calls the 'plaguing (of) drivers just trying to get to work, run errands or shuttle kids to activities' is actually a fair corrective action for dangerous driving behavior that also directly funds programs to make our streets and communities safer.
— Jeff Swirenski, Chicago
Support for curfew
I believe the danger of teen takeovers in Chicago centers on the irrationality of a mob mentality. One or two leaders can stir the others up and prompt them to do things that they would not consider doing on their own.
Throughout human history, mobs have resorted to horrible violence. It is a human weakness that should be guarded against.
That is why I support the 8 p.m. curfew for young people downtown.
— David M. Steadman, Chicago
Willie Wilson's take
Having lived in Chicago for the past 37 years, I have watched Willie Wilson's attention-grabbing actions of philanthropy — standing by a gas pump and handing out $100 bills — seemingly pandering to innocent unsuspecting voters in his political attempts to be Chicago's mayor. Over these last weeks, however, I have been nudged into a repentant apology by his profound take on our political crisis and a sincere and accurate Christian analysis of the problems and deliberate practical steps the individual Christian citizen can take during this holy season.
As a retired Lutheran clergyman, I have been struck by the thundering silence of my own and other denominations' leaders to the flagrant attacks on humanity and the dignity merited by all of God's children. Our city and our nation and especially our faith communities must mark, listen and learn Wilson's profound statement of truths.
— Douglas R. Groll, Chicago
Our nation's wealth
I concur with Willie Wilson's opinion regarding Holy Week ('Trump's actions are inconsistent with true meaning of Easter,' April 10). On several occasions, President Donald Trump has stated that he wants to make America wealthy again. That would seem to suggest that we need to increase the level of our wealth. The ravage of COVID-19 clearly disrupted our economy, as it did for all nations. While inflation was higher in most countries, Americans clearly felt the inflation. Thus, it is easy to forget that we are wealthier than all other countries.
World Population Review provides several measures on household income. Its measure of disposable income per household ranks the U.S. as a clear No. 1 at $51,147 annually, more than $6,000 higher than No. 2 Luxembourg followed by Switzerland and Norway with levels less than $40,000. Certainly, there are numerous other ways to measure wealth, but as the whole world recovers from COVID-19, the U.S. has experienced perhaps the fastest recovery.
Clearly, not every American has experienced the rapid recovery, but in the spirit of Holy Week and Easter, we should reflect on how we might aid the places in dire need of help rather than focusing on how we might be even richer than the rest of the world.
— Siim Sööt, Winnetka
Death with dignity
I am happy to hear that Cook County Judge Patrick Murphy is 86 years old ('What being Cook County's public guardian taught me about death and dignity,' April 9). I'm not happy to hear that 'with ambivalent acceptance,' he recognizes his 'coming demise.' What's his rush? I'm 93 and am planning to be around for my great-grandson's bar mitzvah in eight short years.
I appreciate the work the judge has done in his career as a guardian, and I for one agree that a prescription medication be available to those folks in a very bad time and that they be allowed to take it when the time comes.
— Jerry Pollard, Northbrook
Judge's theology
Judge Patrick Murphy's philosophy and theology on dying conflicts with what the sisters taught him 80 or so years ago. There is a difference between withdrawing extraordinary means of life support and providing death-inducing drugs.
Life remains precious in every age, including Murphy's, and suicide is not an ethically acceptable means of demise, according to centuries of Catholic teaching. Murphy should reach out to any Catholic religious sister to ask what she thinks about his new theology of assisted dying.
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