Cook County Prosecutors Office Changes Policy on Alleged Officer Misconduct Disclosures
As we previously covered, it was earlier reported that the Cook County Prosecutors Office kept a so-called “Do Not Call” list of officers accused of misconduct or viewed as unreliable due to credibility issues in prior conduct/testimony, and the list was later published under the previous States Attorney’s Administration in an effort at transparency. The general idea behind the practice is that after a defendant is made aware of past alleged or proven misconduct of an officer through constitutionally required disclosure to the defense, generally referred to as “Brady” or “Giglio” material, it would be difficult to secure a conviction against the defendant if an officer’s credibility is at issue. However, soon after newly elected Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neil Burke took office late last year, the “Do Not Call” list and a more comprehensive “Disclosure” list were quietly no longer maintained or drastically paired down. To be fair, many of the officers on the previous lists had since been stripped of their police powers and there is overlap between the respective lists maintained by her predecessor and O’Neil Burke’s paired down list, reporters noted several examples of officers who were removed from the list entirely. In response to reports of the change, O’Neill Burke’s policy chief, Yvette Loizon, said that the move was for the sake of officers because, “there [were] no guidelines for how people got on that list. There was no opportunity to get off the list if you were put on the list in error…And there was no clear direction on where the supportive materials and supportive documents and the information that would be potentially appropriate for disclosure would be kept or would live and how.” Defense advocates have generally disagreed with the decision, pointing out that in large jurisdictions such as Cook County, the maintaining of such “Brady Lists” is necessary given the thousands of criminal cases launched every year involving hundreds of officers spread out amongst different city, town, and municipal departments, with Rachel Moran, a University of St. Thomas law professor who has studied Brady lists extensively, saying that the lists are necessary given the sheer amount of data and that, “You couldn’t possibly keep track of this information if you didn’t have a systematic way of doing so.” O’Neil Burke’s new policy for disclosure has narrowed the means and information sought before determining whether disclosure of certain conduct is necessary, which presents problems because even under the old system reporters had uncovered almost 120 instances of officers not appearing on these lists despite having been found to have made, “false, misleading, inaccurate, and/or incomplete statements.” Professor Moran warns that, “Bad Brady policies do lead to wrongful convictions. We know that is a fact, and so that’s certainly the looming concern here.”
History of Wrongful Convictions Runs Deep in Illinois
Illinois was already nicknamed, “the wrongful conviction capital of the country” by the Innocence Project, with 540 instances of wrongfully convicted people having been exonerated by the organization’s count. These wrongful convictions have led to heavy cost for taxpayers, highlighted by the case Troshawn McCoy, one of four exonerees who served 22 years in prison for a double murder they didn’t commit, and have since seen a combined $50 million in settlements with the city of Chicago. “My experience serves as a powerful reminder of the urgent need for systemic reform and the human capacity to overcome profound adversity,” McCoy said. Sadly, if Professor Moran is correct, and that this new policy of limiting disclosure to the accused will lead to further wrongful convictions through Constitutional violations of necessary disclosures, taxpayers and, more importantly, innocent individuals will be paying the price in the future.
