In 2021, my niece was murdered leaving Bible study with her husband. She was shot in a case of mistaken identity by a man who had been convicted of eight previous felonies and had a warrant out for his arrest. My niece left behind five children, two with special needs, and her loved ones who will suffer from this tremendous loss for the rest of our lives.
When the criminal justice system fails, our communities suffer irreparable harm.
Last month, we marked the one-year anniversary of the SAFE-T Act, which includes the Pretrial Fairness Act (PFA). During my 45-year career in public service, including my time as a legislator and as clerk of the Circuit Court, I believe the PFA is the most consequential law regarding the criminal justice system that has been implemented in Illinois. Necessary updates are to be expected. But are they being considered?
In essence, the PFA eliminated cash bail as part of detaining someone in jail after an arrest. We also became the first state in the nation to eliminate cash bail for felony offenses.
Recently, concerns regarding defendants failing to appear for court hearings came to my attention from judges and victims. My office conducted an internal analysis with datasets from the PFA to share with my fellow stakeholders. In a letter I sent Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, I also requested that an independent analysis be conducted — and not by a government contractor — to validate these findings.
Instead of a discussion, the results were leaked to the news media, and my intentions were shamefully politicized. A response from Chief Judge Timothy Evans was filled with inaccuracies.
To provide transparency to the public, the results are as follows:
- In the first 50 weeks of the PFA, out of 90,872 cases, defendants missed court 67,416 times. This includes defendants charged with violent felonies.
- There are currently 31,393 active warrants for arrest in Cook County; they include cases before the PFA.
- The chief judge has a PFA Dashboard that is shared with the public. It considers only warrants as failure-to-appear events and not the postcard notifications sent per the PFA after a defendant fails to appear in court. The dashboard also analyzes only a subset of the total number of cases in Cook County.
- There are pretrial assessments administered at bond court, which provides judges with information on whether to release defendants after an arrest. They were not being updated properly to reflect all the failure-to-appear events.
In Cook County, due to an order by the chief judge in 2017, issuing alternatives to cash bail was already standard practice, but the PFA implemented many long-overdue reform measures statewide. However, the PFA also included nonsensical provisions that have deeply affected the criminal justice system; they have caused mass confusion and made it difficult for judges to detain defendants and issue warrants.
Due to staffing limitations, Cook County stakeholders decided that a “notice to appear” via a postcard would be sent by my office when defendants fail to appear at criminal court hearings. These postcards merely provide the time and place of the next scheduled hearing and are delivered by mail, so I was adamantly opposed to this idea.
Failures to appear in court inflict a financial and human toll on the court system. Court appearances can include victims, witnesses, law enforcement officers, deputy sheriffs, judges, states attorneys and more. When victims and witnesses do not feel safe and stop coming to court, cases are dropped. This is why having a defendant appear in court is imperative to the justice system functioning for all parties; it is critical to public safety.
We keep forgetting the victims of crime in reform conversations. My office is the official record keeper for the court systems in Cook County. When I was elected in 2020, the courts were using a paper-based, record system. The leaders of Cook County had been planning for a digital record system for almost two decades.
My office automated all three court systems and digitized more than 70 million court records. This has provided an unprecedented opportunity for transparency and the ability to truly leverage data to enhance operations, drive reform efforts and make our communities safer. But instead of transparency, the court systems are still not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and I need approval from the chief judge to share any data with the news media, public or research institutions.
In December, I will retire from public service, and I will hold my head high as I leave knowing that my solemn responsibility has always been to serve my fellow citizens of Cook County and the state of Illinois.
Fixing the criminal justice system is deeply personal, not political. I do not want any other families to suffer.
To my fellow citizens: I implore you to contact your county and state elected officials and tell them you support a truly independent analysis of the PFA, that failures to appear to court must be addressed and that you deserve a transparent court system.
Iris Y. Martinez is the clerk of the circuit court of Cook County.
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