Cook County prosecutors take step to streamline evidence tracking in court system long plagued by delays

In a move that could help speed up prosecution of notoriously slow criminal cases, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office will more comprehensively store and track digital evidence, officials said.

A new system is set to be rolled out for adult felony cases Monday, soon after the Tribune published a four-part series chronicling how Cook County murder cases linger on the dockets longer than ever, and longer than any other big-city court that can be measured.

The office has been working on the project for more than a year — not in reaction to the Tribune series, said the office’s chief data officer, Matthew Saniie. But Saniie said the new system could help police share video and other digital files more quickly with prosecutors, who could then more efficiently review it — potentially addressing one bottleneck.

“Our (prosecutors) watch a lot of progress bars as a result of having to deal with these large pieces of evidence,” Saniie said. “That’s a horrible use of lawyer time, you know, and while that’s not necessarily going to go away completely, we’re trying to reduce as much of that as possible.”

In the April series, the Tribune found case delays fueled by gummed-up court machinery overseen by judges allowed to set their own paces and court leaders who’ve largely shunned decades of recommendations for reform.

Reporters found that one of the biggest roadblocks comes during discovery, the very first phase of trial preparation, when prosecutors must gather up all potential evidence and share it with defense attorneys.

The new program aims to save attorneys time by bringing all of a case’s relevant evidence — which can include hundreds of hours of video and other large digital files — into a unified, more manageable system. The cost of the new effort wasn’t immediately available.

The Tribune analysis showed prosecutors can take years to complete discovery, as various police reports, lab tests, 911 recordings, officer videos and other records are sent to them in dribs and drabs.

The new system can’t specifically make people give prosecutors evidence faster — particularly police, whose efforts can be notoriously disjointed and slow. And the system won’t be the first time authorities have used cloud-based digital storage.

But Saniie said the new system — developed by the firm NICE — will be a leap forward, taking disjointed systems and streamlining them into one that will be easier for prosecutors and defense attorneys to use, and for prosecutors’ supervisors to monitor.

It could help the office more easily spot cases in which key evidence has yet to be submitted, and spot prosecutors who are taking longer than others to gather evidence. That becomes increasingly important as cases, particularly more serious felonies, often involve reams of data from 911 dispatch audio, defendants’ cellphones, and various video from city cameras, nearby businesses and arriving officers.

Technology used by the county and by local police has long lagged behind the private sector, and attorneys have frequently complained they waste time attempting to get video files to work on unfamiliar software or outdated hardware.

Saniie told the Tribune that prosecutors get digital files from more than 100 municipalities, many of which use wildly different systems. The county maintains one computer that runs Windows 2000 — a technology more than two decades old — because prosecutors still receive files that can only be played on that operating system, he said.

The new system can read 90% of the types of video files the office receives, Saniie said.

But Saniie acknowledged the new system would be only one step in trying to limit unnecessary case delays.

So far, Chicago police haven’t responded to Tribune questions about what it would do to more quickly provide prosecutors with evidence. CPD efforts have been described by the city’s internal watchdog agency as so slow and haphazard that they didn’t meet basic constitutional requirements.

A spokesman for incoming Mayor Brandon Johnson also did not respond to questions about what a Johnson administration would do to speed up the process.

The Tribune found a host of other reasons why cases stall, and other players that could push reforms. They include county Chief Judge Timothy Evans, responsible for supervising the county courts, and Illinois Chief Justice Mary Jane Theis, who under the state constitution has general administrative and supervisory authority over all local courts.

Neither of their offices has responded to questions posed in the past week about what, if anything, they plan to do to lessen delays.

That includes whether Evans plans to follow through on a promise made in January 2021, and last fall, to work with the circuit clerk’s office to start tracking why delays occur. The circuit clerk’s office has said it’s waiting on Evans’ office to provide it the codes and an order on how to proceed.

Two county commissioners — John Daley and Donna Miller — repeated calls they’ve made for years to track such data.

“We have — or we should have — a system to get that kind of information,” Miller said, adding it’s about more than finding ways to speed up cases to save county dollars. “This has an effect on (crime victims’) families and the detainees themselves. … It just prolongs a lot of that agony on both sides of the coin.”

The circuit clerk’s office said last week it did take a long overdue step to send figures to the state to document how long it took the court to complete felonies. It blamed much of the 11-month delay on computer issues and said, going forward, it should be able to send figures on time.

But it’s unclear whether the public will ever see those figures. State law doesn’t require it. The circuit clerk said it’s up to judges to order its release, either at the local or state level, and no one has.

jmahr@chicagotribune.com

mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com