Authors: Steve Bogira
In Illinois editorial writers, law professors, and most of the bar groups have been
pushing for merit for decades—the Illinois State Bar Association and the Chicago Bar Association first recommended it in 1952. Opposing them have been the party bosses, who deride merit selection as an elitist attempt to rob ordinary citizens of their voting power. And the party bosses always win.
Some minorities and women have also opposed merit on the grounds
that it will make it harder for them to win judicial slots. But evidence suggests that
minorities and women get judgeships at least as often by appointment as by election.
Merit selection was one of the chief reforms proposed by the commission established in the wake of the Greylord probe of judicial corruption in Cook County. That commission in 1985 took note of the
“particularly corrosive effect” of campaign fund-raising by judges under the elective system. Donations to judicial candidates come primarily from lawyers, as the commission pointed out—lawyers likely to appear in front of the judges to whom they donate.
But the Greylord commission’s merit selection plan went the way of all other merit proposals in Illinois. Thus while Greylord may have reduced the practice of lawyers slipping money to judges, either directly or through a deputy or clerk, it’s still perfectly legal, and customary, for lawyers to pass money to judges through their campaign committees.
Illinois judicial candidates are prohibited from personally soliciting or accepting campaign contributions. If they want to raise money, they must establish committees run by others. This is supposed to insulate judges from their contributors. But in practice, it’s a rare judicial candidate who doesn’t closely monitor his campaign, if he doesn’t actually manage it himself. The treasurer of Citizens to Elect Judge Daniel Michael Locallo is the judge’s cousin, John Locallo. But Judge Locallo allows that John Locallo is mainly a figurehead. The judge himself is running his campaign, he says. He knows who gives to him and how much.
Locallo’s committee will take in $21,850 for this retention bid. Most of this comes from criminal defense lawyers, some with cases pending in his courtroom. The checks aren’t especially large—a few are for $500, most are for $300 or less; the lawyers are expected to give to other judges as well. Locallo allows that many lawyers donate to judges not because of their high regard for those judges but simply to better their odds in those courtrooms: “Let’s just say they figure it won’t hurt ’em.” Of course, he’d never favor a lawyer just because he was a contributor, he says. But under a system in which judges are dependent on lawyers for campaign funds, he acknowledges, “the potential for influence is there.”
One might wonder why some judicial candidates bother raising money at all—the retention judges, for instance, since they’re usually shoo-ins. But in Cook County retention judges, and candidates running unopposed for vacant seats, typically raise money anyway, because they’re expected to show their gratitude to the party responsible for their election. In Cook County that’s usually the Democratic Party in the city and the Republican
Party in the suburbs.
In the 1980s the Cook County Democratic Party defined gratitude precisely, requiring a specified “donation”—as much as $10,000 in some years—from each judicial candidate it endorsed.
In 1993 the Illinois Supreme Court banned judges and judicial candidates from paying such assessments.
But judges are still allowed to contribute voluntarily to political organizations through their campaign committees. The contributions are voluntary in the way that some confessions are—and candidates for the Cook County bench usually make the judicious choice.
In Locallo’s first campaign for a full circuit seat in 1992, his committee sent a total of nearly $6,000 to various Democratic ward and political committees. “If you’re asking people to push your candidacy, people are going to expect you to contribute,” Locallo says.
The Cook County Democratic Party has announced its support for all seventy-two retention candidates this year, including the eight judges who have been found wanting by at least two bar groups. Party chairman Thomas Lyons says the party won’t “
play God” by recommending that a judge be dumped. Perhaps the
$40,000 donation sent to the Democratic Party by the retention judges, through their Committee for Retention of Judges in Cook County, plus all the money sent to individual Democratic ward organizations by individual judges, has something to do with this reluctance to “play God.” The judges’ retention committee also sent $20,000 to the Cook County Republican Central Committee in appreciation of that party’s unwillingness to play God with any of the suburban judges.
There’s another reason for the parties to support all the retention judges, the good and the bad alike. A Chicago political adage, “Don’t back no losers,” has a corollary: “Don’t oppose no likely winners.” Party leaders understand that retention judges almost always will be retained, with or without the support of the parties. One can’t predict when a case that’s important to the parties, or to one of their bigwigs, will come before a judge. The parties would just as soon be on good terms with the entire bench. As the infamous Boss Tweed of New York’s Tammany Hall used to say, “It’s good to know the law, but it’s better to know the judge.”
Locallo favored merit selection even before this campaign against him and even though he got his full circuit judgeship via election. Other than the people on the bar association evaluating committees, hardly anyone in the county knows anything about most judicial candidates, he says. He also thinks judges should be “insulated from political pressure”—a sentiment that hasn’t diminished during this attempt to dump him “based on a decision in one case as opposed to my overall record.”
• • •
LOCALLO ISN
’
T GETTING
much work done in 302 the week before the election. He leaves the bench frequently to answer phone calls in his chambers. Many of the calls are from reporters. The judge hasn’t been reluctant to express his views about the campaign against him. If the Carusos were
“used to having things their way, I guess they were disappointed,” he tells a
Tribune
reporter. On a black radio station he derides this attempt “to interfere with the independence of the judiciary,” adding, “I will not be intimidated.” On a TV newscast he says the Carusos are “
cowards, just like their son was a coward, an eighteen-year-old beating up a thirteen-year-old.” Locallo takes offense when a
law professor suggests in the
Sun-Times
that it might be inappropriate for a judge to be making such comments. “I’d like to say to that idiot, ‘Let’s [threaten to] take your professorship away from you, even when you’re doing the right job,’ ” Locallo tells me. “ ‘Are you gonna just sit on your ass and do nothing?’ If I’m gonna go down, I’m gonna go down fighting.”
Also interrupting Locallo’s work are the defense lawyers who stop by the courtroom to express their support for him. A lawyer tells Locallo he won’t be able to make it to his fund-raising dinner later in the week, but he’ll be sending a check to his campaign committee. The judge invites a few of the visiting attorneys back to his chambers for chats. The courtroom prosecutors and public defenders are growing weary of these disruptions and of the brownnosing. “ ‘Hi, Judge—I just wanted to kiss your ass,’ ” PD Amy Thompson grumbles to herself after Locallo repairs to his chambers with a lawyer one morning.
Locallo gets some bad news shortly before the election. He learns that Jesse Jackson’s PUSH/Rainbow Coalition is planning to support seventy-one of the seventy-two judges up for retention. It will urge voters to dump only one judge—Locallo. Jackson still objects to his approval of the plea deals.
But Locallo enlists the aid of two local African American criminal justice heavies: his mentor, Appellate Justice William Cousins, and former Appellate Justice Eugene Pincham. Cousins and Pincham contact Reverend Jackson on Locallo’s behalf, and Jackson soon announces that PUSH/Rainbow will be supporting Locallo after all. Later, Locallo’s campaign committee will send
three checks to PUSH for a total of $1,200.
LOCALLO
’
S FUND-RAISER
is held at Villa De Marco, an Italian restaurant a half mile east of the courthouse, on the evening of Thursday, October 29, five days before the election. Villa De Marco is a modest place but large enough to accommodate a crowd. It has hosted many fund-raisers for
26th Street judges as well as the holiday party the judges throw for court personnel each December.
By seven-thirty
P.M
. the restaurant is crammed with public defenders, private criminal attorneys, judges, and a few prosecutors, who fill their plates with chicken and pasta from the buffet table. After the attendees wolf down dinner, they head for the bar. Locallo works the crowd effortlessly. The liquor flows freely and the clamor grows. Then Michael Bolan, another 26th Street judge, whistles the gathering to order.
The noise abates as Judge James Obbish, a former prosecutor and a friend of Locallo’s, welcomes everyone. With Locallo standing next to him, Obbish pokes fun at the probation sentences Locallo gave Jasas and Kwidzinski. Before driving here tonight from his home in a western suburb, Obbish says, he’d seen a kid in his neighborhood “who didn’t belong, if you know what I mean.” There are snickers from the crowd. “I got out of my car,” Obbish continues. “Got out my baseball bat. And then I thought, ‘I’m not doing that community service!’ ” Everyone roars, including Locallo. “Anybody who says it isn’t a deterrent doesn’t know what they’re talking about,” Obbish says. Then he turns to Locallo. “What the
hell
were you thinking?” There’s more laughter.
“We all know what a great guy Danny is,” Obbish says. “And we all know, more importantly, what a great judge he is. He did what he was supposed to do, and it’s unfortunate that some people are trying to use it against him.” Then, to loud cheers, he introduces Locallo to the crowd.
Locallo is brief. “It’s been tough times for my wife and my family, and it’s so gratifying the support you’ve given us. I know you’re all behind me. Sometimes you’re way behind me,” he says, to chuckles. “Thank you for being here. Let’s have a great time tonight, and we’ll kick their ass on Tuesday.”
Appellate Justice Cousins drops by later in the evening and, on Locallo’s request, addresses the crowd. Locallo introduces the thin, silver-haired Cousins as “the best judge in the state of Illinois,” and Cousins responds in kind, calling Locallo the best prosecutor to work in his courtroom when he was at 26th Street. Cousins relates the efforts he made to convince black political powerhouses that Locallo deserved their support. He told them “that Judge Locallo is one of the best human beings that I know,” he says. At Cousins’s side, Locallo jams his hands into his pants pockets and looks sheepishly at his shoes. “Dan may feel some unease, just like some defense counsel and prosecutors feel when they’re not sure of the outcome of a trial,” Cousins says. “But everything’s gonna be all right.”
ON TUESDAY, NOVEMBER
3, voters in the fourteenth precinct of Chicago’s 25th Ward—the precinct in which the Caruso family resides—turn
thumbs down on Locallo, with 111 nays and 82 yeas. But in almost every other precinct in the county, the verdict is different. Locallo coasts to retention with a 78 percent affirmative vote, well above the required 60 percent.
At nine
P.M
. on election day Locallo and his wife and two children drive from their home to the office of the Illinois Judges Association downtown. The mood in the spartan assembly room is buoyant. With half the vote reported, it looks as if not only Locallo but all seventy-two judges on the retention ballot will be retained. On a TV in a corner of the room, a newscaster is talking about the anti-Locallo campaign: “Apparently it didn’t work.”
Some judges were miffed at Locallo before the election. They feared that the campaign against him might drag some of them to defeat as well. But now Locallo is being treated as if he just quarterbacked his team to victory. The other judges are shaking his hand and slapping his back.
“I think all that great press you got energized the voters,” Judge Thomas Hett says.
Locallo responds that the credit really should go to the Carusos. “Maybe we can all get cigars at their cigar shop.”
He takes a call from a reporter. “This is a great day for the independence of the judiciary,” the judge says into the phone.
The final results will show no judge up for retention getting less than 64 percent. All eight judges whose retention was opposed by two or more bar groups have survived. Judge Jeffrey Lawrence, who was opposed by all nine bar groups evaluating him, has received 66 percent. “
We retained all our qualified judges,” Chicago Bar Association president Leonard Schrager will say tomorrow. “Unfortunately, we also retained the unqualified ones.”
Now, in the IJA office, Locallo makes it clear he has no conciliatory feelings regarding the Carusos just because he’s won. “If they thought I was going to give them a break because I’m Italian, they misread me,” he says. “If they thought I was going to be a shrinking violet because of their campaign, they totally misread Daniel Michael Locallo.” His only regret about the Caruso case “is that I didn’t give the sonovabitch ten.”
The Bridgeport case may prove to be pivotal in the history of the courthouse, he says. He’d stood his ground despite enormous pressure, showing, to blacks in particular, “that nobody’s above the law” in Cook County. “It was important to send a message to blacks who are saying, ‘The system is against us, we can never get justice.’ I don’t think anybody can say that justice was not done in this case.”
BUT MICHAEL KWIDZINSKI
probably can.
In all of the stories about the Bridgeport beating before Caruso’s trial,
there’d been little debate about the innocence or guilt of the three defendants. Their guilt was assumed; the only questions concerned what prompted their attack and whether they’d get away with it. The usual public belief—that if the defendants hadn’t done anything wrong they wouldn’t have been charged—was only accentuated by the disappearance of one witness and the slaying of another.