In the upcoming Nov. 5 general election, Kane County voters will choose between Democratic incumbent Jamie Mosser and Republican challenger Andrew Sosnowski to serve as the county’s state’s attorney for the next four years.
The Kane County state’s attorney’s job is to charge suspects with crimes and prosecute those crimes, arguing in court on behalf of the state against the accused, in addition to providing legal counsel to county officials.
Both candidates recently spoke with The Beacon-News about their background, experience and policy positions in addition to their vision for the future of the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office.
Jamie Mosser, Democratic incumbent
Mosser knew from a young age that she wanted to be a lawyer, and in late middle school had already narrowed her focus to becoming a prosecuting attorney, she said in a recent phone interview.
After graduating from DePaul University’s College of Law in 2002, she became a prosecutor for the first time in New Orleans, Louisiana, where she served as an assistant district attorney for two years.
She then moved back to Illinois, where she grew up, to be a prosecutor for the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office, handling cases covering domestic violence, DUIs, drugs and general felonies, she said.
Eventually, she became the head of the Domestic Violence Unit, a position she held from around 2010 to 2015, according to Mosser. She said the best thing she did during her time in that position was create a domestic violence diversion program, which she said is now one of Kane County’s highly successful diversion programs.
After leaving the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office, Mosser went into private practice and then worked at Prairie State Legal Services. There, she represented victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, she said.
While she loved helping victims through Prairie State Legal Services, Mosser wanted to go back to being a prosecutor because that is her passion, she said.
But, Mosser said she wanted to have “true criminal justice reform” in Kane County because she felt like, when she previously worked for the county’s State’s Attorney’s Office, there was too much focus on putting people in jail or prison, which she said does not help in some cases.
“What I wanted to do was to come back to the office but do it in a way that I felt was best for Kane County, which was to bring different criminal justice ideas to the office,” Mosser said.
She left Prairie State Legal Services to open her own private practice in 2019, which she closed after winning the Kane County state’s attorney race in 2020.
Mosser said she feels that one of her biggest accomplishments over the past four years has been what she sees as a balanced approach to prosecution.
“We have to realize that the majority of the people who come into our system do so because of untreated mental health, substance use disorder and a lack of resources, but there are people who cause our community to be extremely unsafe,” she said.
Those who break the law because of issues like mental health or a lack of resources need to be helped through rehabilitation and treatment, but some need to be put in jail or prison to protect the community, Mosser said.
To help those who need it, instead of just putting them away, Mosser said she has expanded all of the county’s deferred prosecution programs and created a pre-arrest diversion program.
She also created the Child Exploitation Unit, which is a partnership with the Kane County Sheriff’s Office to find and prosecute those in the county who are downloading, distributing and reproducing child pornography, according to Mosser.
The unit is needed because, while Aurora and Elgin may have the resources to track these crimes within their city limits, the smaller cities and communities within the county do not have those same resources, she said.
“That’s the balance I’m talking about,” Mosser said. “We need the best of our prosecutors and investigators to go after the people who need to be in jail or prison, but we need to divert individuals who can get help to help as soon as possible because then they’re likely to stay out of our system.”
Going into the upcoming election, Mosser said that one of the biggest issues facing the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office, and the county in general, is funding.
The state legislature has passed unfunded mandates onto state’s attorneys throughout the state, she said. Crime trends are also changing, so more employees are needed to deal with these types of crimes, she said.
Mosser said she has previously worked with the Kane County Board to get raises for her employees to match the pay of other nearby counties and has continued to work with the board to find additional funding for her office and other law enforcement offices.
Domestic violence is another issue facing the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office, and is “the biggest issue that we have in our criminal justice system for a number of reasons,” according to Mosser.
Being a victim or bystander to domestic violence makes a person more likely to be a victim or abuser in the future and makes them more likely to suffer from substance abuse disorder or have mental health issues, which could get them involved in the legal system, she said.
To address this issue, Mosser said she is working with the judiciary branch to create three courtrooms focused on domestic violence with judges, prosecutors and public defenders that have specialized, trauma-informed training.
Mosser said her vision is for the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office to be innovative in its programing, especially as a way to be proactive about stopping crime rather than reactive.
“I want people to look at Kane County in general and say, ‘They’re doing it right. How can we copy those programs?’” she said.
Andrew Sosnowski, Republican challenger
A Chicago-area native, Sosnowski was first a high school teacher before going back to school to be a lawyer, he said during a recent interview.
After graduating from Drake University’s Law School, Sosnowski started his law career in the 1990s as a prosecutor in McHenry County before moving to work in the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office, he said. While he worked on other types of cases, he said that he got heavily into juvenile law.
“At one time, I was the prosecutor who terminated the most parental rights to free children up for adoption,” Sosnowski said. “I was really big into freeing kids for their life.”
During this time, Sosnowski adopted a child and fostered children, he said.
Because of his interest in juvenile law, he was appointed the head of the county’s then-new Family Justice Division, according to Sosnowski.
He also helped to develop the county’s Child Advocacy Center, which involved bringing together people from a variety of different agencies, including from local police departments, Illinois State Police and the state Department of Children Family Services, he said.
Sosnowski was then appointed to be the deputy general counsel for the Department of Children Family Services, which had him running the department’s legal services for half the state, he said.
He then went into private practice until he was approached by the National Insurance Crime Bureau, which asked him to be its general counsel, according to Sosnowski. He said that he held that position for almost 11 years, during which time he was co-counsel on cases across the country.
Now Sosnowski is back in private practice with an office in Elgin. Through that office, he is the general counsel for Volunteers of America in Illinois, for which he also runs legal services and supervises the Special Services for Veterans and Veterans Families, he said.
Sosnowski also is a senior lecturer at Aurora University, where he teaches about criminal justice. It was actually his students at Aurora University who first urged him to run for Kane County state’s attorney and who helped him to get on the ballot, he said.
Other people may want to see him win, but what Sosnowski said sparked him to want to be the next Kane County state’s attorney was the “progressive laws that are coming out of Springfield that really don’t reflect us in Kane County.”
He said the SAFE-T Act, for example, was designed to get rid of racism in the justice system — which he said is a worthy goal — but was focused on a problem that he said only really existed in Cook County.
“All those people that were languishing in the court system that were Black and brown were from Cook County. We didn’t see it in Kane,” he said. “Yet now, we have the laws here that are not necessary.”
Because of this, Sosnowski proposed a moratorium on the SAFE-T Act until it can be fixed. He said in particular the pre-trial fairness portion of the act, which eliminated cash bail, is harming local communities because some of the people being released are dangerous criminals.
While Mosser has also talked about pushing for changes to the SAFE-T Act, Sosnowski said it shouldn’t continue to be in effect while people work to fix it.
One of the issues he said the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office is facing is the rise in the budget over the last four years. If elected, Sosnowski would study the county’s diversion and similar programs to see what is working and what isn’t, then cut what isn’t working and streamline what is, he said.
“There’s a lot of money being spent on this, taxpayers’ money, during a time when we don’t have funds in Kane County,” he said. “We have to live within our means, and some of these programs are not working the way they should.”
Another issue is Kane County elected officials’ trust in the State’s Attorney’s Office civil division, according to Sosnowski. He said he wants to improve what he sees as a lack of trust in the office’s legal advice by making sure the civil division has the resources it needs to properly represent county officials.
Another thing Sosnowski said he would want to do if elected is create something similar to the Child Advocacy Center, which brings together a variety of different agencies, but focusing on human trafficking and exploitation. He would hope to bring in a variety of local, state, federal and even international law enforcement agencies to work together and share data, he said.
Because of his experience at the National Insurance Crime Bureau, Sosnowski said he already has the connections to build this new center and the expertise working with large sets of data to track crime. Using data from national and international law enforcement agencies, the center would track migration patterns to see where people, particularly undocumented immigrants, are being exploited, he said.
Sosnowski’s vision for the future of the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office is that it would be professional and efficient with well-trained prosecutors, clear lines of authority and boundaries on programs, he said.
If elected, Sosnowski said he would also do more prosecution of criminals and less plea deals. Deals often mean shorter time served, and so people are not as deterred by prison time for doing crimes, he said.
“I want criminals who are organized, or gangs, to know if they come into Kane County, they’re going to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” he said.
Sosnowski said he also wants to keep politics out of the office, be they personal or professional. No matter what his personal connections may be, everyone’s punishment will fit their crime, he said.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
