New Class Of Cook County Associate Judges More Racially Diverse Than Past Years

Chicago IL

15 September, 2021

4:16 PM

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By Aviva Waldman, Carlos Ballesteros and Josh McGhee, Injustice Watch: Cook County's circuit judges have selected a group of new associate judges to join them on the bench — and this class is more racially diverse than previous cohorts. Twelve of the 22 new associate judges announced Thursday are people of color, according to Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans' office, and the group is evenly split between women and men. That's a big shift from the past two associate judges elections. In 2018, only one of the 17 candidates selected to serve as an associate judge was Black. In 2019, one-third of the new associate judges were people of color, but no Latinx judges were selected. This year's group includes at least six Black judges, four Latinx judges, and two Asian judges, according to Injustice Watch reporting. However, the new class is much less diverse when it comes to professional backgrounds. More than half of the new associate judges are current or former prosecutors, while just one has experience as a public defender. The group also includes attorneys who have worked for the city, state agencies, and in private practice, including one new judge who has defended Chicago police officers accused of misconduct. The new associate judges will be sworn in Oct. 4. More than 200 candidates applied to become associate judges this year, and a selection committee headed by Evans announced 44 finalists in August. The county's 249 circuit judges, who are elected by the public, voted by mail-in ballot. The Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, which certifies the elections, announced the winners last week but didn't release the vote tallies. Associate judges share nearly the same responsibilities as circuit judges, but they earn slightly lower salaries, can't vote in internal court elections for the county's chief judge or associate judges, and must get permission from the chief judge to take on a felony trial. Diversifying the bench Judges have wide-ranging powers to interpret and enforce the law, and research shows that a judge's background — including their race, ethnicity, gender, and professional experience — can have a measurable impact on how they rule. "Black and brown communities are disproportionately impacted by the court system, particularly in the criminal court system," said a spokesperson for the Black Women Lawyers' Association of Greater Chicago, one of several legal groups that screen associate judge candidates. "Therefore, it is critically important to ensure that we have diverse judges who represent those communities," the spokesperson said. After just one Black associate judge was selected in 2018, the BWLA and the Cook County Bar Association argued that qualified candidates of color were being overlooked by the county's mostly white circuit court judges. Evans put out a statement saying "the concept of justice requires" a more diverse bench, and pledging to push for qualified judges who better reflected the county's diversity. Read More No African American candidates chosen as Cook County judges add 16 to bench Cook County's new group of associate judges includes candidates whose backgrounds are Greek, Asian, Hispanic, Jewish, and more. But not one of the 16 judges already selected are African-American. The 17th seat, still to be filled, will go to one of two black men — leaving black women excluded. Despite the more diverse makeup of this year's associate judges cohort, the Cook County Circuit Court still has a long way to go to match the county's population. About two-thirds of sitting judges are white, 20% are Black, 9% are Latinx, and 3% are Asian, according to data provided by Evans' office. The county's population, on the other hand, is about 40% white, one-quarter Black, one-quarter Latinx, and 8% Asian. Saranya Raghavan, president of the South Asian Bar Association of Chicago, said it's often an uphill battle to get enough circuit judges to support an associate judge candidate of color. The group's members wrote letters of recommendation for several candidates this year, she said, including Assistant U.S. Attorney Ankur Srivastava, one of the two Asian-American candidates who made it onto the bench. "It just takes so much more effort to get someone who is from a diverse background elected, it seems, than someone who is not," Raghavan said. "I think it would behoove us to look into why that's the case." Proponents of the associate judges selection process argue that it more closely resembles a merit-based system than the partisan public elections for circuit judges. Research shows that campaign donations, party politics, and ethnic prejudice have heavily influenced those elections, primarily benefiting white candidates in Cook County with political connections and Irish-sounding names. But the associate judges selection process can't easily overcome the structural and pipeline issues that have kept the judiciary — and the legal profession — disproportionately white and affluent. From 2014 to 2019, about 20% of the associate judges who won a seat lived in the 8th judicial subcircuit, which covers the affluent and predominantly white neighborhoods of the Loop and Lincoln Park, according to data collected by Cook County Circuit Judge Robert Balanoff. Over the same period, less than 2% of new associate judges hailed from the 1st judicial subcircuit, which includes the predominantly Black and working-class communities of Chatham and South Chicago. Balanoff, who presides over the court's child protection division, has proposed an amendment to the Illinois Supreme Court rules that would require circuit court judges to select associate judges from all the county's 15 geographic subcircuits. Such a system would help ensure a more diverse slate of associate judges, Balanoff said. "I believe that when people walk into the courthouse, what they see on the bench should be a reflection of the city they live in or the county they live in," Balanoff told Injustice Watch. The Illinois Supreme Court has not yet made a decision on his proposal. Prosecutor-to-judge pipeline More than half of the new associate judges followed the well-traveled path from the Cook County State's Attorney's Office to the judge's chambers. Fourteen of the 22 new associate judges are current or former Cook County prosecutors. Just one is a former public defender. And even that former public defender, Maryam Ahmad, joins the bench from her current post as the chief of the state's attorney's office's juvenile justice bureau. Circuit Judge Grace Dickler, who presides over the court's domestic relations division and sat on the committee that screened the applicants for associate judge, said the circuit judges try to make sure that the associate judges they pick "are going to be fair no matter what their background." But research shows that a judge's professional background may influence their judicial decisions. A recent study of federal judges appointed by former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump found that those who were former prosecutors or corporate attorneys were less likely to rule in favor of employees who sued their employers than those with public interest or other professional backgrounds. The study's author, Emory University School of Law professor Joanna Shepherd, wrote that a judge's professional experience "will inevitably exert some influence" on how a judge determines which arguments that they find convincing or which witnesses they find credible. Ahmad — one of three Black women in this year's associate judges cohort — was an assistant public defender from 2004 to 2007, when she left the Cook County public defender's office to become a prosecutor. Maryam Ahmad is one of 22 new Cook County associate judges selected in Sept. 2021. She said she thought her experience as a public defender was important when she switched to the other side of the courtroom. "I spent days and days in the lockups at 26th Street," she said, referring to Cook County's main criminal courthouse. "I understand what custody does to folks, I understand what it does to families, and you want people on the prosecution side who understand those issues." Ahmad is also one of five incoming associate judges who were previously appointed to the bench by the Illinois Supreme Court but lost their seats in primary elections. The Illinois Supreme Court appointed her to the bench in 2014, but she lost in the 2016 Democratic primary and waged an unsuccessful write-in campaign in the general election that fall. Five who lost Cook County judicial primary earn new path to bench The 16 new Cook County associate judges announced by the state court system on Monday include five who had lost primary elections at the polling place in March. But a vote by the county's circuit judges has rewarded them with seats on the bench in any event. Six other current assistant state's attorneys were selected as associate judges, including Martha-Victoria Jimenez, a supervisor for the office's civil actions bureau, and Barbara Lynette Dawkins. Dawkins, who has been an assistant state's attorney for nearly two decades, also serves as a village trustee for south suburban Homewood. Seven former prosecutors were also chosen, including William Fahy, who has defended numerous Chicago police officers accused of excessive force and other misconduct since leaving the Cook County State's Attorney's Office in 2000. One of those officers was Thomas Gaffney, who was among the first officers to encounter 17-year-old Laquan McDonald the night that former police officer Jason Van Dyke killed him in October 2014. Gaffney was charged with official misconduct, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice for allegedly falsifying police reports from the scene, but a judge found him not guilty of all charges in 2019. Fahy also represented former Chicago cop Janet Mondragon, one of four officers the Chicago Police Board fired for allegedly filing or approving false police reports related to McDonald's murder. Fahy could not be reached for comment. Below is a full list of the 22 new associate judges, with biographical information provided by the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts: Maryam Ahmad Resident: Chicago Age: 57 Admitted to the Bar: 2000 Law School: DePaul University College of Law Current Affiliation: Cook County State's Attorney's Office Lloyd James Brooks Resident: Homewood, Illinois Age: 50 Admitted to the Bar: 2000 Law School: Northwestern University School of Law Current Affiliation: The Brooks Law Firm Barbara Lynette Dawkins Resident: Homewood, Illinois Age: 49 Admitted to the Bar: 1998 Law School: Vanderbilt University Current Affiliation: Cook County State's Attorney's Office James Thomas Derico Jr. Resident: Chicago Age: 61 Admitted to the Bar: 1985 Law School: University of Pennsylvania Law School Current Affiliation: Derico & Associates Sabra Lynne Ebersole Resident: River Forest, Illinois Age: 54 Admitted to the Bar: 1993 Law School: DePaul University College of Law Current Affiliation: Law Office of Sabra Ebersole Carl Lauras Evans Jr. Resident: Tinley Park, Illinois Age: 55 Admitted to the Bar: 1993 Law School: The John Marshall Law School Current Affiliation: Law Offices of Carl Evans Jr. William Nicholas Fahy Resident: Chicago Age: 58 Admitted to the Bar: 1990 Law School: The John Marshall Law School Current Affiliation: Law Office of William N. Fahy Barbara Nubia Flores Resident: Chicago Age: 44 Admitted to the Bar: 2004 Law School: Illinois Institute of Technology's Chicago-Kent College of Law Current Affiliation: Illinois Workers' Compensation Commission Mitchell Benjamin Goldberg Resident: Chicago Age: 47 Admitted to the Bar: 1999 Law School: DePaul University College of Law Current Affiliation: Lawrence Kamin Jasmine Villaflor Hernandez Resident: Chicago Age: 41 Admitted to the Bar: 2008 Law School: University of Illinois College of Law Current Affiliation: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Matthew William Jannusch Resident: Chicago Age: 46 Admitted to the Bar: 2001 Law School: Northern Illinois University College of Law Current Affiliation: Cook County State's Attorney's Office Martha-Victoria Jimenez Resident: Chicago Age: 46 Admitted to the Bar: 2002 Law School: University of Illinois College of Law Current Affiliation: Cook County State's Attorney's Office Diana Elena Lopez Resident: Chicago Age: 46 Admitted to the Bar: 2001 Law School: Loyola University Chicago School of Law Current Affiliation: Lopez Law Group Kerrie Elizabeth Maloney Laytin Resident: Chicago Age: 50 Admitted to the Bar: 1998 Law School: Columbia Law School Current Affiliation: Illinois Human Rights Commission Thomas A. Morrissey Resident: Riverside, Illinois Age: 62 Admitted to the Bar: 1985 Law School: DePaul University College of Law Current Affiliation: Law Offices of Thomas A. Morrissey James Bryan Novy Resident: Chicago Age: 51 Admitted to the Bar: 1997 Law School: Northern Illinois University College of Law Current Affiliation: Rock Fusco & Connelly Eric Michael Sauceda Resident: Bartlett, Illinois Age: 48 Admitted to the Bar: 1999 Law School: University of Illinois College of Law Current Affiliation: Cook County State's Attorney's Office Theresa Marie Smith Conyers Resident: Chicago Age: 49 Admitted to the Bar: 1999 Law School: University of Illinois College of Law Current Affiliation: City of Chicago Law Department Ankur Srivastava Resident: Glenview, Illinois Age: 41 Admitted to the Bar: 2005 Law School: Yale Law School Current Affiliation: U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois Pamela J. Stratigakis Resident: Chicago Age: 45 Admitted to the Bar: 2001 Law School: DePaul University College of Law Current Affiliation: Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard and Smith Anthony Charles Swanagan Resident: Flossmoor, Illinois Age: 61 Admitted to the Bar: 1987 Law School: University of Chicago Law School Current Affiliation: Illinois Attorney General's Office Andreana Ann Turano Resident: Northfield, Illinois Age: 54 Admitted to the Bar: 1993 Law School: The John Marshall Law School Current Affiliation: Cook County State's Attorney's Office Injustice Watch is a non-partisan, not-for-profit, multimedia journalism organization that conducts in-depth research exposing institutional failures that obstruct justice and equality. For more stories from Injustice Watch, visit InjusticeWatch.org.