CHICAGO (AP) - For more than a year, Antwaun McLaren kept a spotless record while serving probation for a cocaine possession conviction, regularly checking in with his Cook County probation officer and passing urine tests to make sure that he remained drug free.
But unable to find work, the 23-year-old father of two, including a newborn son, had his cellphone service cut off after falling behind on his bill. When he missed his probation officer’s calls, McLaren found himself back in court, standing before Judge Diane Gordon Cannon in early 2018 for violating probation.
McLaren expected to be kept on probation after a brief hearing. He didn’t know that Cannon had a history of being tough on violators.
Cannon has sent some 1,450 defendants to state prison for violating probation, about 35% of those who appeared before her on such violations and the most of any judge currently on the Cook County bench, an unprecedented analysis of two decades of court data by The Circuit has found.
By contrast, dozens of past and present judges who heard a similar number of probation violations - for picking up a new charge, missing check-ins or skirting other rules - sentenced on average 13% of the defendants to state prison, according to the investigation by The Circuit, an investigative collaboration of the nonprofit news organizations the Better Government Association, Injustice Watch and The Chicago Reporter.
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The nonprofit news outlet Injustice Watch provided this article to The Associated Press through a collaboration with Institute for Nonprofit News.
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On that January day, Cannon ordered McLaren held without bond in the Cook County Jail until a hearing on the probation violation could be held. He remained in custody for two months before prosecutors dropped the matter.
Despite the fact that it was McLaren’s first run-in with the law as an adult, Cannon implied that he was part of a gang or mob, McLaren recalled in an interview.
“Don’t look at me like I’m nothing. Still respect me as a human being,” McLaren said. “I can’t even pay a phone bill. What criminal organization am I in?”
Attorneys - many of whom spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation by Cannon and other judges - said Cannon has a long history of bullying behavior and verbal outbursts from the bench, insensitivity toward minorities and a noticeable prosecution preference.
Cannon, who is white and a veteran of nearly 25 years on the bench, did not return repeated calls and emails seeking comment. Judge LeRoy Martin Jr., who presides over the court’s criminal division, said in an emailed response Cannon has been on paid sick leave from her $206,400-per-year job since the beginning of 2020 and is not seeking retention in the November election.
The court’s most substituted judge
Cannon’s record of harsh treatment toward defendants and verbal outbursts, as well as her reputation for being pro-prosecution, may have led to another dubious distinction: Over the last couple of years, attorneys, using an obscure legal maneuver, have bounced her off more cases than any other judge at Cook County’s main criminal courthouse, the analysis found.
Criminal cases are randomly assigned to judges by computer. Under state law, defense attorneys and prosecutors can opt for a different judge once - twice in murder and a handful of other serious offenses. No specific reason has to be given, but the motions for a “substitution of judge,” or SOJ, must be filed within 10 days of a judge being assigned. Motions to substitute can still be made later, but attorneys then must show that a judge is prejudiced against them - a difficult hurdle to overcome.
Attorneys quickly removed Cannon from nearly one of every five cases randomly assigned to her in 2018 and the first half of 2019, far more than any other judge, according to the analysis.
The high number of SOJ motions against Cannon showed just how much she is viewed as biased and unfair and should raise concern among top court officials about her conduct, attorneys said.
Thomas Geraghty, a longtime professor at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, called on Martin and Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans to track SOJs as one indicator of whether judges are up to the task of dispensing justice fairly.
“If judges are getting a lot of these motions … there should be some process for figuring out is there a problem with the judge,” Geraghty said in an interview.
Evans and Martin declined to be interviewed for this story, but Mary Wisniewski, the chief judge’s spokeswoman, issued a statement saying court officials do not track SOJs because they are not “a reflection of judicial performance,” noting that the motions can be filed “for any reason.”
But lawyers who regularly frequent the county’s main criminal courthouse at 26th Street and California Avenue said they share their take with one another on the judges presiding there, giving them a good sense of their qualifications.
Cannon was bounced from at least 56 cases in 2018, almost 16% of the approximately 360 cases randomly assigned to her, the analysis found. No other judge even came close.
Of the 33 Cook County judges who were assigned at least 300 criminal cases in 2018, seven didn’t have a single SOJ filed against them, according to the analysis.
Questions of demeanor and impartiality
The criticism against Cannon for her temperament and fairness goes back years.
Angered two years ago when she caught an intern for the public defender’s office texting on his cellphone in the midst of a bench trial, Cannon took possession of the phone and read the texts aloud before tossing the young man from her courtroom, according to several attorneys in the courtroom at the time, as well as the defendant whose case was being heard.
Flamond Williams, who was on trial on a weapons charge in March 2018, recalled that Cannon almost threw out an assistant public defender along with the intern, both of whom were waiting to be heard on other matters.
That June, the Cook County public defender’s office halted assigning the same attorneys every day to Cannon’s courtroom, a longtime practice that the office has continued elsewhere at the courthouse at 26th Street and California Avenue.
In an emailed statement, Cook County Public Defender Amy Campanelli chalked up the change to a pilot project designed to keep her assistants on a case all the way from its inception to conclusion. No additional courtrooms besides Cannon’s have been added since then, though the office said it plans to expand the pilot project next month.
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Data analysis for this story was conducted by Forest Gregg and Hannah Cushman Garland of DataMade and Jared Rutecki of the BGA.
This story is part of The Circuit, a joint project of the nonprofit news organizations Better Government Association, The Chicago Reporter and Injustice Watch, in partnership with the civic tech consulting firm DataMade. The Circuit was made possible with support from the McCormick Foundation.
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