As Cook County courts fail to address delays that erode justice, a neighboring system shows reform is possible

When a defendant appearing in court has been jailed for a lengthy period, a color-coded spreadsheet alerts the judge that the case has been dragging.

Instead of hearings that last only a minute or two — just long enough to set a date for the next hearing — judges often explore whether a delay is necessary and set firm deadlines for attorneys.

Outside of court, the major players in the court system talk regularly about ways to ensure cases don’t stall, aiming to avoid delays that can be agonizing for victims, witnesses and defendants alike.

This is the scenario in the Kane County criminal courts, 40 miles west of Cook County and miles ahead of its larger counterpart in addressing problems that can slow the pace of justice to a near-standstill.

“Every day that passes, there’s a stress that goes along with having an open case for the victims, for the witnesses, for the defendant,” said Kane County’s chief judge, Clint Hull, in explaining his court’s push to tackle delays. “In the end, trying to get the case resolved is something that helps everybody.”

In just two short years, Kane County has reduced by half the backlog of people languishing in jail for more than a year. Only one defendant has been detained for more than three years without trial. Meanwhile, in Cook, delays have only worsened, as the Tribune recently reported in the investigation “Stalled Justice.” Some cases are now taking a decade or more to resolve.

The type of effort shown in Kane County is generally what experts have long recommended on a far larger scale in Cook. The Tribune’s investigation, published in April, found Cook County’s criminal courts were taking longer than ever to complete murder cases — more than four years in most instances. That’s longer than it takes in New York, Los Angeles or any other big city with available data.

Cook County’s chief judge, Timothy Evans, has downplayed the Tribune’s findings and failed to make it a priority to limit unnecessary delays. Instead, Evans has given county judges wide latitude even as they let cases fester for longer than a presidential term. That’s consistent with decades of inaction on the part of county leaders, who have ignored numerous recommendations to fix the maddening courthouse roadblocks that can delay cases at every phase.

To be sure, Kane County has a tenth of the population of Cook, but Kane contains much of Illinois’ second largest city, Aurora, and sees its share of violent crimes, including murders, rapes and robberies.

Hull acknowledged that Cook’s courthouse players have far more complex bureaucracies to navigate, but said he knows the county is also stocked with quality prosecutors and judges.

“They’re hardworking. They’re passionate. They care,” Hull said. “Everything we’re doing here can be replicated. It’s just a matter of trying to figure out how to do it.”

Going after delays

Hull, who’s served as chief judge in Kane since late 2019, began the push to study and limit delays when he had some down time in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, records and interviews show. He was later joined by the county’s five felony trial judges, as well as the sheriff, public defender and state’s attorney.

All agreed that case delays were a serious problem worth tackling, particularly during a pandemic in which shutdowns were exacerbating the problem.

“We all saw an end goal in mind, and we wanted to get to that end goal,” said Kane County State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser.

The Kane County officials focused on cases in which defendants had been jailed more than a year without trial, first strategizing what to do and then launching the effort in May 2021.

Key to the effort was something Kane County judges simply call “the list.” It’s a weekly spreadsheet, with special tabs, that lists details of every pending case involving a defendant jailed at least a year. Hull’s assistant puts it together with help from the sheriff’s office, and it’s sent to each of the five felony trial judges.

In a sit-down interview, the five judges credited Hull’s spreadsheets with helping them prioritize cases that may have slowed to a crawl without anyone noticing.

After all, the judges each juggle roughly 500 cases, a dozen or two of which might come before them on a typical day. Usually that’s for short “status” hearings, held every month or two, when attorneys can update the judge on what they’ve done to get the case ready for trial and what they need more time to accomplish.

Before the tracking system, it was easy for cases to drag as judges OK’d multiple seemingly innocuous requests for delays.

“When (the) list came out, I was kind of surprised at some of the numbers, how long people were in,” said Associate Judge David Kliment, a former public defender. “We realize it’s our responsibility to push these things along, and we all started doing it, and the cases started getting resolved.”

Judges said no magic, massive change was needed to limit delays and push cases to resolution. Each judge, in their own way, pushed more aggressively for attorneys to complete the basic phases of court cases, from sharing evidence to filing pretrial motions.

At each morning’s call of court cases, when attorneys didn’t meet deadlines, the judges pressed for explanations and worked up specific goals to be met by future hearing dates. Courthouse players said judges still approve delays that are unavoidable, but otherwise attorneys are expected to meet deadlines.

“You have to push the call,” said Circuit Judge John Barsanti, a former state’s attorney. “If you rely on lawyers to push it, they never push it.”

In Cook County, in comparison, Tribune reporters who observed hearings rarely saw judges question attorneys who sought delays. Judges simply asked when attorneys wanted to come back for another hearing, then scribbled the new date on the standard courthouse case log with the initials “B/A” to signify the delay was “by agreement” of both attorneys.

Though state law technically requires attorneys to write up special motions when seeking most delays, Chicago-area judges rarely demand them, saying it’s impractical. That’s true in Kane County too. But judges there say they often ask attorneys to better describe the holdup and state for the record what’s going to be done about it.

“I don’t just let a case get continued for status,” said Associate Judge Alice Tracy. “When I see that in an order, I sort of have a little prickle go up my back. I want to know exactly why it’s continued, what’s the problem.”

The county also has installed a faster evidence-sharing computer system to speed up the first phase of a case and has released more defendants on electronic monitoring, which reduces the number of people held behind bars. (Cook County prosecutors also recently announced a plan to try to speed up the sharing of evidence.)

Judges and attorneys acknowledge that the aggressive push to limit delays could make courtrooms more tense at times. But judges say they try to limit any courtroom drama by engaging with attorneys without belittling them.

“You don’t have to be unpleasant about it,” said Circuit Judge Elizabeth Flood. “You don’t have to tear into someone for ‘not doing their job’ or saying that they’re being lazy or anything like that.”

And the Kane County courthouse players say all parties are committed to limiting unnecessary delays without rushing attorneys in ways that might jeopardize defendants’ right to a fair trial.

“We are working hard, both sides, to get finality to these cases,” said the county’s public defender, Rachele Conant.

Backlog cut in half

The results of that work can be seen in the court’s weekly lists, which Hull shared with the Tribune.

Nationally, some legal advocates want courts to aim for an ambitious goal, that all felony cases are completed within a year. Recently enacted state standards set the bar lower: 98% of felonies completed in 2 ½ years.

When the efforts in Kane began, 10 people had been held without trial for longer than three years, county data show. By late June, only one remained in that category.

Another six defendants have been held at least two years without a trial — down from 26 in May 2021, a 77% drop. The number of additional people held at least a year without a trial fell 55% since 2021, from 71 to 32.

Meanwhile, in Cook County, jail data shows that as of June 28, it was holding 599 people whose cases had been pending for at least three years, with an additional 463 jailed more than two years and another 845 jailed at least a year. Those numbers haven’t changed much since 2021.

Another way to compare: Cook County has roughly 10 times the felony case filings of Kane County but nearly 50 times the number of defendants jailed at least a year with a pending case.

Cook County doesn’t compare poorly just to smaller Kane County. New York City has a greater volume of felony cases than Cook, but its courts are jailing roughly 600 fewer people with cases pending at least a year.

Evans’ office declined to directly answer questions about Kane County’s efforts. It instead pointed to a commentary by Evans that the Tribune published June 16, in which he defended the system he’s overseen for two decades.

In that commentary, he said his courts are improving while cautioning that cases are complex, Cook County has a notorious record of wrongful convictions and judges must be careful not to rush justice.

“If cases are forced to trial prematurely, injustice may result for the defendant or victim and additional time and taxpayer money may be needed for an appeal or a new trial,” Evans wrote.

In fairness, Kane County judges acknowledge that their game plan would be harder to implement in a bigger county with far more cases and entrenched bureaucracies, such as Chicago police dragging their feet on providing evidence and ensuring officers don’t skip court hearings.

At the same time, national research has found that both big and small systems can be efficient, given proper case management. New York City saw success after it pushed to cut delays a decade ago. Cook County made a brief effort nearly two decades ago that was credited for a roughly 30% drop in backlogged cases.

For bigger counties, an initiative to reduce delays could begin with one wing of a large courthouse or a smaller branch courthouse, Hull said.

A three-year wait

One key to Kane’s success has been regular data tracking, seen in Hull’s weekly list of long-running cases. Cases at least two years old are colored orange on the spreadsheet to draw attention, and there are still a handful on the latest list.

Colored in red is the case of the one defendant who’s spent more than three years in jail awaiting trial. That’s Keyshaune Steele, whose wait exemplifies how cases can linger without resolution.

Court records show Steele was arrested in 2019 on a gun charge, released on bond, then arrested in March 2020, accused of shooting a woman during a robbery in Elgin.

Jailed since his 2020 arrest, Steele had more than 80 defendants ahead of him on Kane County’s earliest list in 2021 — people who had been arrested before him and were still waiting for trial.

As each of those other cases got resolved, Steele remained in jail.

A trial date on the illegal gun charge, which prosecutors chose to pursue first, has been pushed back for more than a year as Steele switched attorneys twice. His current attorneys, from the public defender’s office, filed pretrial motions seeking to invalidate some of the evidence in the case.

In Cook County, such motions frequently become speed bumps in cases as attorneys ask for time to prepare their arguments and arrange testimony from witnesses, including police officers who sometimes fail to show up to court. The process can drag on for years.

But for Steele’s gun case in Kane County, court records show the judge in the case — Kliment — has been issuing increasingly explicit orders with tight timetables.

In May, he scheduled a June hearing to decide the motions and a July trial date. At the June hearing, where a police officer showed up to testify on time, Kliment listened to 90 minutes of testimony and arguments, ruled on the three pending motions and reminded the attorneys, again, that trial was set for July.

“And if you have any other motions, you have to have them filed by June 30,” Kliment told them.

Neither side asked for more time. That means Steele’s name could be off the list by the end of July.

If that occurs, no one still in Kane County Jail will have been detained for more than three years without a trial.

jmahr@chicagotribune.com