![]() 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. 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. 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. “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. He was later joined by the county’s five felony trial judges, as well as the sheriff, public defender and state’s attorney.Īll agreed that case delays were a serious problem worth tackling, particularly during a pandemic in which shutdowns were exacerbating the problem. 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. It’s just a matter of trying to figure out how to do it.” Going after delays “Everything we’re doing here can be replicated. ![]() 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. 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. 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. Instead, Evans has given county judges wide latitude even as they let cases fester for longer than a presidential term. That’s longer than it takes in New York, Los Angeles or any other big city with available data.Ĭook County’s chief judge, Timothy Evans, has downplayed the Tribune’s findings and failed to make it a priority to limit unnecessary delays. 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. The type of effort shown in Kane County is generally what experts have long recommended on a far larger scale in Cook. 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. Only one defendant has been detained for more than three years without trial. In just two short years, Kane County has reduced by half the backlog of people languishing in jail for more than a year. “In the end, trying to get the case resolved is something that helps everybody.” “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. ![]() 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.
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