A Conversation with Cook County State’s Attorney Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke

Episode Notes

Transcript

Tracy Brammeier:

Hello everyone and welcome to the Chicago Bar Association @theBar podcast where we have unscripted conversations with our guests about legal news, topics, stories, and whatever else strikes our fancy. We are here today with our esteemed guest, Madam State’s Attorney Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke. Justice Burke was a Cook County assistant state’s attorney for 10 years before going into private practice as a criminal defense attorney. In 2008, justice Burke was elected to the Circuit Court of Cook County, where she served for eight years, presiding over both criminal and civil court litigation. In 2016, she was elected justice of the first district appellate court in Cook County. Justice Burke issued over 800 written decisions in both civil and criminal cases, reviewing over 1800 trial court decisions. Justice Burke, Madame State’s attorney, thank you so much for being here today.

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

Thank you, Tracy. Thank you, Maggie for having me. I appreciate the time.

Maggie Mendenhall Casey:

Of course. We’re honored to be in your presence, judge. Oh, you’re so kind.

Tracy Brammeier:

Okay, and here with Justice Burke Today I am Tracy Brammeier, attorney at Clifford Law Offices and with me is Maggie Mendenhall-Casey of the city of Chicago’s tort department

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

And alumni of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office,

Tracy Brammeier:

Always

Maggie Mendenhall Casey:

And Forever First assistant state’s attorney on behalf of the People.

Tracy Brammeier:

Justice Burke, for our very first hard-hitting question for you, what made you decide that you wanted to leave your job? That I think most lawyers would consider to be already the pinnacle of their career to run for Cook County state’s attorney.

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

I can understand why people would be like, why would you do this? It really didn’t make a lot of sense in a number of ways, didn’t make sense. It was a way easier job that paid more than my current job, but I just had this thought kept coming back to me that I was needed. I was needed to do this. We were at a point in our criminal justice system where nobody had any faith in the justice system. Victims didn’t have any faith in it. Defendants didn’t have any faith in it. We were having people sitting in custody for five years waiting to go to trial because discovery wasn’t complied with or if discovery was complied with. There was such massive attrition in the state’s attorney’s office that nobody was available to try the case. So I could have sat back, stayed on the appellate court and kept clucking about how bad it was or I could try to do something about it.

I decided to step down from the bench and run for this job if I had known in any way, shape or form how difficult a political campaign would be in Chicago and I had run for judge twice. It wasn’t like I was completely unfamiliar, but that was like a tea party compared to a knife throwing contest, comparing a judicial election to this election. It was bare knuckles what you would expect in a political election, but which doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. So I’m happy that that phase is over and we’re into the work part now and that’s the part I love. That’s the part that’s exciting and what gets my juices flowing every morning.

Tracy Brammeier:

Just now you mentioned attrition from the state’s attorney’s office preventing the office from getting some work done, and I know you’ve talked about recruiting a brand new type of state’s attorney into your office. What does it look like for you to be sort of rebuilding that office in a different way?

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

It’s a challenge, but it’s so exciting and I have to tell you, I have a hidden skillset and the hidden skillset was finding talented people to come on board and build this team with me. We have melded together so well as a team. So my first assistant is Judge Dimopoulos and she said the other day, I go home exhausted every single night and I wake up excited every single morning and that’s how we all feel. We’re all leaving it all on the field every single day and every single morning we come back ready to start again. So the recruitment part of it, some of it is happening organically on its own. People are sensing something new is going on here, something different is happening. And just simple tweaks made a big difference. So for example, we were told to expect about a 50% acceptance rate on our offers to third years, but what was happening is they were making those offers in March and April. Well, by March and April, a lot of three Ls have already found a different job. So we made it a priority as soon as we came in to get our offers out to three L. So in December we had our offers out, we

Maggie Mendenhall Casey:

Got how fascinating,

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

Oh, we got 29 out of 30 acceptances. Just that little tweak made a significant difference. And now we’re really building on our community outreach. We are getting into the law schools, we’re going to recruitment fairs, we’re talking to ’em about what is it that the state’s attorney’s office can do for you. You’re not going to make what you make in the private sector at the state’s attorney’s office, but what we do offer is an experience that’s unparalleled. We will give you the skills and the tools to become a great trial attorney. And I know Maggie, you feel that way about the state’s attorney’s office. Did you learn a lot while you were there?

Maggie Mendenhall Casey:

So I was a state’s attorney for six years and during the six years that I was in the office, I tried over 150 cases, whether that be jury bench trial. No one can ever take that experience away from me and that’s experience that I use to this day. So if you really are looking for your bonafides about making yourself into a trial attorney, there’s arguably no better place in the state to get those skills in and maybe even the country than the Cook County State’s attorney’s office. So I definitely can attest to that. You mentioned your recruitment and you also mentioned being able to have that strong center core of your office. What steps are you taking toward retention? Because you bring people in the door if they’re going out just as fast, it’s not really making that impact.

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

And a third of our office has been in the office three years or less. I mean that’s significant. And so we started looking at where is the pressure point? Where are we losing people the most? And it shouldn’t surprise anybody, it’s felony review. That has always been a pressure point for the office. So now we’re looking at what can we do to make this not the hazing ritual that it’s always been. And if I could just take a moment to explain what felony review is. Before anyone is charged with a felony in Cook County, a state’s attorney has to review the case and determine whether the evidence is sufficient to warrant charges. It’s a 24 hour a day, seven day a week cycle. So you work a month of nights, then you work a month of days, you work on weekends. It’s very disruptive to anybody’s life and it’s very difficult to maintain a normal life when you’re working that kind of schedule.

I did felony review when I had my first, he was a baby at home and it was difficult to find childcare. It’s difficult if you have family commitments. It’s just difficult to do that. So we are looking at ways to alleviate that pressure point or make it where it’s, you can do the pressure point but you’re not stuck there for a year and a half or two years or however we can make that like I want to pursue looking at can we do part-timers on the weekends? Can somebody work three days That way we could alleviate that pressure point. Is there a possibility to shrink our overnight hours where when we have the least amount of cases being called in, can we just have that be a person on duty who does it once a night and we’re not having people stay up all night long in order to fulfill that job of felony review?

That’s one of our pressure points. One of the other pressure points that we’re seeing is domestic violence. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. That is a extremely difficult assignment and we are putting people in there who are right out of law school. So what we want to do is make that a place that people want to go to. You can do an entire trajectory in domestic violence. You can start out in misdemeanors, you can do first appearance court, you can do preliminary hearings, you can move up into felony cases and then focus on domestic murders. And the type of person that we’re appealing to with that is somebody who really wants to start helping people on day one because you will start making an impact on day one when you talk to somebody, when you learn how that type of victim might be dealing with different stressors than other types of victim and how do you address those concerns. So a lot of it is finding the people who want to do that kind of work and getting them in the right place at the right time.

Maggie Mendenhall Casey:

As a former state’s attorney, I would say it’s refreshing to hear from you judge, acknowledging the stressor that is felony review. Having previously been on review myself, you’ve been on review to have you publicly acknowledging the stress and communicating to your staff those who may want to come to the office that you and your team are reviewing and trying to figure out a way to still do the work that needs to be done. Law enforcement is a 24 7 job, but do it in a way that is feasible and workable for your staff. So it is refreshing and I do appreciate hearing that from you.

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

One of the other things that we’re looking at in specific assignments, abuse and neglect, they call child production. Now, when I was dating myself when

Maggie Mendenhall Casey:

I was there saying abuse, neglect, yes,

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

That assignment domestic violence where you’re dealing with human tragedy day in and day out. This isn’t the job where you can walk out the door at five o’clock and shut off the light. This is a job that wakes you up in the middle of the night that even a decade later you’re still thinking about a case that you tried. Then this is job that requires dedication, but it’s also we need to recognize that there is a mental toll that this job can take on it. So we are partnering with some philanthropy groups about let’s start getting some help in there. Let’s start having some clinicians in these units where people can go and talk and we can start addressing that there is a very real thing called secondary post-traumatic stress that will start to impact you. Let’s start having webinars about it where we talk to all of our assistants like how do you recognize that?

How do you see it in other people and what do you do if you think you’re starting to suffer from some secondary post-traumatic stress? How do we mitigate against that? How do we address those concerns so that it’s not the devastating impact that it can be? So we are looking at, I’m not making the job sound very appealing right now, so I want to talk about how we can and what we are offering. We have started developing a curriculum for every level of the state’s attorney’s office where we are looking at case law, the constitution, the statute, and the Courtroom skills that are necessary to be effective at that job. So for example, the juvenile court is governed by the Juvenile Court Act completely different than the criminal code. So before you set foot in a juvenile Courtroom, you are going to be familiar with the Juvenile Court Act.

You’re going to be familiar with the different processes that happen in a juvenile court. Same thing every single step of the way in the state’s attorney’s office, we’re going to have a dedicated curriculum studying the case law and the statutes and the constitution that will govern that area. So you’re going to come out of the state’s attorney’s office having a master’s degree in trial work. There’s going to be no better training than right here in Cook County. That’s what we’re offering if you want to be a trial attorney. Then right here, I spent a lot of time in appeals. I was always a nerd and I always liked the appellate division. I became a supervisor in appeals and I spent a lot of time there. We can offer that to people. So we only will you come out of the state’s attorney’s office with more jury trials than anybody in an entire law firm can claim. But I have more appellate experience. When I ran for the appellate court, I had a hundred briefs and 40 oral arguments that I had done. You will never get that in the private sector. So that’s what we offer. We offer an amount of experience and training that’s unparalleled.

Tracy Brammeier:

So Judge, you’ve talked a lot so far about the staffing issues and how you’re addressing them within the office, which I think rightfully is getting a lot of your attention. What are some other issues and priorities that you have at the start of your term here?

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

So it shouldn’t surprise anybody that guns is our priority right now. We’re experiencing gun violence in ways that we never have before. We’re seeing numbers that we have never seen before. Part of it is attributable to the pandemic, but the vast majority of the gun violence that we’re seeing right now is driven by the use of machine gun conversion devices as well as switches and extended magazines. When a handgun has been equipped with a switch or a machine gun conversion device and they put a drum on the bottom of it, which can hold a hundred rounds, those guns can spray bullets. They spray 30 rounds in two seconds if you have ever. That’s terrifying. It is truly the most terrifying thing I have ever seen. If anybody is interested in Google what it looks like when one of those machine gun conversion devices is deployed, we are seeing the ramifications of that by, there’s a lot of innocent people that have nothing to do with the dispute that are getting swept up in gunfire.

We’re seeing people shot in their homes, we’re seeing people shot in cars. We’re seeing the ramifications of this type of weapon being used. We have a tool in Illinois and the tool is the assault weapons ban. The assault weapons ban elevates the class of offense and it elevates the term of sentence we have already. Day one, we started treating these classifications of weapons very, very differently because of the danger that they pose because of the horrible destruction that they have been wreaking on the entire county. So on day one, our gun detention policy was if you are caught with an assault weapon, including a machine gun conversion device or an extended magazine, we are asking for detention. We are asking for jail time each and every time someone is found with one of these weapons because of the dangerousness that they pose.

Tracy Brammeier:

And as far as that having a deterrent effect on people wrongfully possessing those weapons. At what point or how long would you expect it to take before you start seeing results or measurable results, I guess?

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

Well, even though we’re asking for detention, we’re not always getting detention and in fact the judiciary is slow to come around to my way of thinking. But we’re going to get there because it is so vitally important that the message is sent out that we’re treating these weapons very, very seriously. So we are not getting the detention rates that we would like to see, but we’re not backing off. I strongly believe that we need to get our gun violence under control. It is impacting the economic viability of this city. It is causing businesses and people to leave and we’re so positioned in this country that we should be booming. We’re dead center in this country. We’re not experiencing catastrophic climate change like the coast are. We have infrastructure here. We have world-class universities here, and yet we have businesses and people leaving and they’re leaving because of crime. So we need to get control of it and we will not get control of the armed robbers or the carjackings until we get control of these assault weapons.

Tracy Brammeier:

Speaking of detention rates and measuring success via statistics, at the end of your predecessor’s administration, she released a report saying that for the cases the state’s attorney’s office filed, 79% resulted in conviction and among all cases the conviction rate was 65%. Are those statistics that you’re looking to maintain, improve upon? What are your thoughts about measuring success that way?

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

There are so many checks on the system, that number should be much, much higher. And let me explain why. In order for someone to be initially charged, it has to be reviewed by an attorney to see if there is sufficient evidence to go forward for the state to sustain our burden of proof. That’s the first check, second check, first appearance. Court judge is going to now take a look at that evidence and the judge is going to say, do you have a sufficient basis to be asking for detention? Third check preliminary hearings. Preliminary hearings are looking at whether this case is sustainable through trial. The standard of proof isn’t beyond a reasonable doubt, but it is a significant burden. After you go through these three checks you should be at, we’re pretty sure we can prove this case. So those statistics are okay. They’re not good. So

Tracy Brammeier:

You think there’s room for improvement?

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

I think there’s a significant room for improvement there.

Tracy Brammeier:

Okay.

Maggie Mendenhall Casey:

You mentioned one of your priorities, which is tackling violence and going after violence through making sure that you’re being tough on gun offenders. Another priority of yours that you’ve been very public about is changing how retail thefts are prosecuted within your office. For those people out there who are curious about why is the state’s attorney prioritizing property crimes when we have violence here, how do you respond to those type of inquiries?

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

So I can tell Maggie as a lawyer and used to practice criminal law because most people say, why’d you change the retail theft statute? And we did not change the retail theft statute. The retail theft statute reads the value of the goods is $300 or above. What had happened with the prior administration was they decided not to prosecute retail theft if the value of the goods was a thousand dollars or less. Well, you can clear out several aisles of Walgreens before you get to a thousand dollars. I think we all know that. We’ve all seen brazen theft occurring that we didn’t see before,

Tracy Brammeier:

Or we’ve all gone to Walgreens and not been able to get anything off

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

The shelf exactly like everything is under lock and key now. So the Retail Merchants Association took me on a tour during the campaign to a Walgreens in Little Village and a Home Depot in Little Village, and we went in and everything was behind plastic. Everything had to be unlocked. They had to remove a emergency exit door, they had to have full-time security. They have three minutes from the time you ring that bell to get a worker over there to unlock it before the customer walks out the door and orders it from Amazon. So they were pretty adamant of we cannot continue to do business like that. We’ve seen the ramifications of this policy. Walgreens, CVS, target, Walmart have closed all over the county and in many times in the neighborhoods where they are needed the most. There is a direct ramification of this policy. We also, when the policy initially came out, we saw people going into a store, filling up a backpack, walking out the door, then the behavior accelerated.

Then we’d see five people coming in, filling up backpacks, walking out the door. Then we started to see the driving into retail establishments clearing out their entire inventory by organized crime, who’s then turning around and selling it online. The behavior, because it wasn’t checked, kept accelerating. And as a result of that, more and more businesses were driven out of Chicago. We can’t have that. And my view is I took an oath as a judge to follow the law. I took the same oath as state’s attorney to follow the law. The law is $300 or above. If there’s an appetite to change the law, the correct way to do that is go to Springfield and change the law and I will uphold that law. But it is not appropriate just to say, eh, I don’t like that. I’m not going to prosecute anything because now you have removed a complete deterrent.

There’s a lot of people that would never commit a theft unless I thought there was no consequence to it. Once there’s no consequence, then it’s Katy bar the door because everybody’s going to start stealing. So that doesn’t mean that every single person charged with retail theft needs to go to jail. We have a wide variety of options available to us. If somebody is charged with retail theft and they have no background, they can do theft school, they complete the class, they don’t get arrested again. It’s gone. It’s off the record. Then we grade eight, up two supervision, probation and jail time if the offense or the offender warrants it, but just not prosecuting clearly has not worked.

Tracy Brammeier:

So we’ve talked now a little bit about the reform on detention policy for assault weapons and an effort to get guns off the street. We’ve talked about your change in how you choose to prosecute or I guess the mandate to go ahead and prosecute all retail theft of $300 or more in an effort to prevent businesses from fleeing Chicago. What other policy changes are on the horizon and what are their motivations?

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

So we are, as you know, Yvette Loin is our chief of policy, and every single day we are rolling out different policy ideas. We’re vetting them amongst each other. We need to tackle domestic violence Next. That is one of our focuses is domestic violence. 12 women have been killed in the last several months who had pending cases or orders of protection there. We knew that it was a problem that something has gone wildly awry there. But there’s another thing going on. So every morning I get a case list of cases that came in the night before. We’re seeing levels of violence in domestic violence that we have not seen before. I’m going to give you just a ballpark. Probably three out of 10 murders now have some domestic violence component to it that we’re seeing there is something going wrong. Part of it, I think is the pandemic.

I think the pandemic created a lot of gun ownership that probably wouldn’t have happened without the pandemic, but it also kicked mental illness into high gear. So if you were hanging onto the bottom rung of the ladder and you had a clinic that you were going to and getting treatment from, that bottom rung is gone. It doesn’t exist anymore. And we have to start figuring out how we’re going to rebuild our society that accommodates people with mental illness that accommodates women who are scared and need to be in a different environment than they are. So that’s our focus now is we are looking very, very closely at domestic violence. We are looking at other jurisdictions and how are they approaching it? One of the major problems that we had in domestic violence and first appearance court in general is our systems don’t talk to each other.

So our system doesn’t talk to the chief judge’s system, doesn’t talk to the sheriff’s system. We do get a feed from CPD, but for example, if the Sheriff’s office has been unable to serve an order of protection, so let’s say a woman got five orders of protection, but her partner was evading service on those, all of those records were sealed. We couldn’t get access to ’em. So we couldn’t present any of that information in first appearance court. I’ll give you another scarier scenario. We had met with some of the judges who are in first appearance court to find out before I was elected to find out what is going on, what are your concerns. So one of them gave us an example of one day the state had filed a petition to detain under the Safety Act. We should talk about that. Under the Safety Act, the state has filed a petition to detain the narrative.

In the petition to detain said he violated an order of protection based on he left a basket of gifts for his children on his ex-wife’s porch. So the judge looked at the state’s attorney who was brand spanking new and said, state, what’s the basis for your detention? She was like, ham, I’m not really sure. So the judge tells her, luckily she came out of civil court. She tells her court clerk who she brought with her from civil court, go into the divorce file. Here’s how you backdoor into the divorce file. In the divorce file, there was the order of protection. They pulled up the order of protection. Order of protection was based upon the fact that the father had taken the children absconded to Indiana, barricaded himself in a hotel room, threatening himself and the children. They surrounded the hotel with a SWAT team in order to get the children out.

And that was the basis for detention. If the judge didn’t know how to do that or didn’t have a court clerk who could do that, she would’ve released him. That’s why we need to have all the stakeholders sitting down together and figuring out how do we make our systems talk to each other because we can’t be flying blind when we’re going in and asking for detention. We can’t be hamstringing the judiciary with limited information. We need to be able to present them with the fullest case possible on why we’re asking for detention. So within the first week, we embedded two investigators over in domestic violence court saying like, okay, we need you to do a deep dive in whatever means you can to find out as much information as possible. Is there other activity out of state? Is there anything that we’re missing that we need to present to the judge when we ask for detention?

Maggie Mendenhall Casey:

That’s such a strong anecdote for explaining why there’s a need for all of these different various stakeholders and just governmental programs and software to be interacting with each other. Because if it had not been for the judge taking the extra step whose clerk and her knew how to get into the system, that that information wouldn’t be out there. And there’s a reason why when I came through the office, everybody knew even though they may be misdemeanors, domestic violence as well as DUIs truly have the potential to lead to catastrophic results. But on that note, I think this is a good place for us to take our first break. We’re back from our break. Before we took our break, judge Burke, you did mention the Safety Act and you’ve been talking a lot about first appearance court. It did take me a moment to lodge. It’s not called Bond Court anymore because we are not setting Bond. Do you mind talking a little bit about the Safety Act and its impact on how bond and bail is set in the state of Illinois?

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

Sure. Bond used to be set, judges had set a bond commiserate with the seriousness of the offense. So the more serious the offense, the higher the bond it’d be. We’ve all seen that if it’s a murder, it’d be a million dollar bond. What the Safety Act does is it fundamentally changes how we approach pretrial detention. So instead of saying, okay, this is serious offense, it’s going to be a million dollar bond. Now the criterion is are you a danger to the public or are you not? And I think this is a seismic step forward in our justice system. We’re the first state to try to do this. So the question is, well, why is it? Are you a danger or are you not? And the answer is pretty simple. You shouldn’t be able to buy your way out of jail if you’re a danger to the public, like a Jeffrey Epstein type shouldn’t be able to buy his way out of jail.

And at the same time, if you’re not a danger to the public, you should not be incarcerated before you’re found guilty if you’re not a danger to the public. So this is a step forward. This is a step that is going to provide more racial equity in our bond system and who is detained pretrial. That being said, the Safety Act or Pretrial Fairness Act also changes the state’s attorney’s role in detention now rather than a judge just making that determination before a judge can make that determination, the state needs to file a petition to detain. If the state’s attorney doesn’t file a petition to detain, it doesn’t matter how egregious the offense is, a judge cannot detain them. So the role of the state’s attorney has become significantly more important and that we are ready and that we are applying the correct criterion of when we’re seeking detention.

So I don’t believe in playing hide the ball. I will tell you our policy is we ask for detention each and every time someone’s found with an assault weapon. We ask for detention each and every time a felony is committed with a weapon, we ask for detention each and every time there are serious injuries as a result of the crime such as armed robbery. Well, any armed robbery is committed with a gun or another weapon, we’ll ask for detention. I also believe that in order to have a thriving city, we need to have a safe public transportation system. We do not have that right now. If you’re a shift worker, you do not have the option of driving or taking an Uber. You need to take public transportation and it needs to be safe. So any violent crime on the CTA or any public transportation, we are asking for detention and jail time month. I believe that we can change the criminal behavior by enforcing the law and by letting it be known that we treat these offenses very seriously.

Tracy Brammeier:

Are these standards and these offense criteria that you’re using to seek detention new to your office? Or are these the same or similar as what was being applied before you came in?

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

These are new. During the pandemic, there was a big push for people to be released from Cook County Jail. As a result, up until about six months ago, the number was there was 140 people in Cook County charged with murder or attempt murder on electronic monitoring. That number should scare everyone. That is an offense that you should not be on electronic monitoring for. And we can talk about electronic monitoring too, because that is going to be a seismic change.

Maggie Mendenhall Casey:

I’d love to hear about that.

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

So Sheriff Dart is no longer going to be doing electronic monitoring. He will not be in charge of it. He is turning it over to the chief judge. The reasons are, there’s a myriad of reasons. But when under the Pretrial Fairness Act, when somebody is on electronic monitoring, they’re given two furlough days where they cannot be monitored. So

Maggie Mendenhall Casey:

They can go anywhere, they can go to

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

Vegas, they can go anywhere if they’re on their two furlough days. But as a result, it has made it impossible to do monitoring of electronic monitoring. And so Sheriff Dart said, I’m not going to do this anymore. This is an untenable system. So he is turning it back to the chief judge. So one of the challenges as a result of that is the chief judge’s personnel do not have arrest authority. So currently what happens is if someone’s on electronic monitoring and they’re not on their furlough days and they go AWOL or they’re violating the electronic monitoring,

Maggie Mendenhall Casey:

And for our lay people out there by electronic monitoring, we ankle bracelet.

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

Yes, yes. And so when they would violate, the sheriff would immediately go out, find them and arrest them. The chief judge’s personnel do not have arrest authority. So yesterday at a stakeholder’s meeting, I said, well, what’s the plan here? And the plan currently is that chief judge’s office would notify the state’s attorney’s office and seek an arrest warrant and then the arrest warrant, I said, well, who’s going to effectuate the arrest warrant? There wasn’t any plan for that. And so I said, has anybody talked to the sheriff’s office about chief Judge gets notification that electronic monitoring is being violated now Sheriff, go get ’em. There was no coordination of that. And there’s no coordination with CPD or the suburban law enforcement departments on how that system is going to play out. But my view is we are going to ask for detention when somebody is a danger. If we do not believe he is a danger, I don’t care if they’re monitored or not. I mean, in fact, they probably shouldn’t be monitored if they’re not a danger to the public. So there’s going to be seismic changes to electronic monitoring and we’re on top of it. We’re trying to get our house in order so that we can be ready for those changes.

Tracy Brammeier:

It also makes me wonder, are the furlough days even worthwhile or appropriate?

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

Well, and Maggie can tell you this too. There was always an opportunity if somebody was on electronic monitoring and they had to go to a funeral or a job interview or a doctor’s appointment, all they had to do was call the probation officer and they would get leave to do that.

Tracy Brammeier:

Special circumstances.

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

Special circumstances that you would know when they’re going and when they’re coming back and the monitoring. So it wasn’t that anyone was precluded from doing those things. And that was the intention behind the furlough days, was that people could schedule those types of things on the two furlough days. So it’s created more problems than it’s helped in my view.

Maggie Mendenhall Casey:

You are someone that started off in the state’s attorney’s office, went on and had a career in defense practice and then went on to the bench. I want to go back to your career as a line state’s attorney. You talked about how a decade later someone might have a case that sticks with them, something that they remember. And we know that a state’s attorney loves to tell a war story. I’d love to hear from you, judge, about what is one of those cases that really sticks with you from your time as a line a SA

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

Know abuse and neglect again, was one of those seminal assignments where you’re dealing with children who have been the victims of horrific abuse, just horrific. And those were the cases that had keep me up at night. Those were the cases that I would come back to again and again and again. And always there was no criminal penalty. The method was do we have to remove the child? Do we have to? And that was traumatic for them as well. So a lot of those things were difficult. Felony review was one of those times when you’re working, it’s also like a Mickey Spillane novel. So it’s very exciting, very thrilling. But one of the cases that sticks with me the most, I think about a lot was when I was a defense attorney, I had represented a young man, he was 14 years old who came into my office with his mother and his mother.

They lived in Inglewood and his mother was a fierce woman. And she said they have charged him with a gun. He did not have a gun. And a lot of times a kid will tell his mom one thing. And so I made sure that the mom left the office and he sat down and he was at a college prep school. And I said, okay, mom’s not here. I want to hear the story because I can’t help you unless I know exactly what happened. And so he told me he was at a college prep school. He came into the neighborhood and a bunch of his buddies from grade school were hanging out on the corner. He was just talking to him. All of a sudden a squad car rolled up and told all 12 of ’em to get against the wall. They all got against the wall.

Somebody pitches a gun, lands right in front of my client. And so when that happened, they said, okay, here’s your gun. And they charged him with a unlawful use of a weapon. So his mother said, there is going to be no plea agreement on this. There is going to be no nothing. He is not admitting to anything. And I said to him, when we are alone, I said, how do you feel about that? And he said, it wasn’t my gut. And so I said, okay, we’re going to go to trial. So I made the error of telling him to dress like he dressed going to church. Well, I didn’t ask him what he wears to church before I told him that he showed up at court with a white suit, white shoes, a top hat and a cane. Oh no. And I was like, oh boy, okay. Note to self, from now on, you ask what they wear before you tell ’em to wear it. So he couldn’t get anybody else who was on the street that night to come with him as a witness. I had two police officers and my client in his white suit. I was like, okay, we’re going with it. And I got lucky. I had a judge that believed him and found him not guilty.

So

Maggie Mendenhall Casey:

Many. And you told him to leave the cane in your office.

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

Now don’t bring the cane to court. So anyways, I thought about him occasionally here and there, and I had gotten to know him and his mom a little bit. And many years later, I go on the bench and I go to the appellate court. I had gotten, and this sounds like a big deal, and it’s not. I had gotten a death threat as soon as I got to the appellate court. And every single judge will get a death threat at some point in their career. I don’t know what it is about the job, but you get a death threat. So the appellate court is not exactly a hotbed of excitement. So there wasn’t a correct security team that was there. So I get a call from reception saying, somebody’s here to see you. And I was like, oh, that’s about the screening process. Somebody’s here to see you. And so I went out and I see this very large man, and I said, can I help you? And he said, he gave me his name and didn’t connect. And he said, well, I’m going to law school tomorrow and I just wanted to tell you, you changed my life.

Maggie Mendenhall Casey:

No.

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

And I was like, what? And he said, you represented me in juvenile court. And then all the nickels fell into place. And I remembered him and I remembered his mom. And he said, you told me that I didn’t have the option of hanging out on the corner. I did not have that option. And I listened to you and I always, I had been telling you that the police planted that gun on me. And you kept saying to me, somebody on that street that night was willing for you to take the rap on this, and I didn’t believe you. And he said, when I went to college, I came back to the neighborhood for a party and a bunch of my friends were laughing about how that was Ricky’s gun. He said, and then I remembered that every single thing you said to me was true, that somebody out there was willing to have me take the rap for that gun. As lawyers, we can change people’s lives. I don’t care if you are a divorce lawyer or a personal injury attorney, or we change people’s lives. And that’s an awesome responsibility to have that we solve people’s problems. He was always a reminder to me of that.

Tracy Brammeier:

I’m understanding also why you’re back in the state’s attorney’s office now. Okay. I think it’s a good time to take another break. And we’re back, judge, as we near the end of our time with you here today, I was wondering how, if at all, all of the fast moving parts of the new federal administration are affecting you here in Cook County?

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

Well, when Matt Gates was the attorney general nominee, we were getting a lot of resumes from the US attorney. So that has trickled off a little bit, but we need to fill the void. And it’s not just by this administration. We always had a public corruption unit in the state’s attorney’s office, but it was, we went after the small fish. We never went after the big fish. That was the US attorney’s job. We would go after the building inspector who was shaking people down, but we always had a public corruption unit. The unit has been pretty

Tracy Brammeier:

Gutted.

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

Gutted, and it doesn’t really exist anymore. So the US Supreme Court took away one of the major tools of US attorneys for public corruption in the United States versus Snyder case for the Portage Mayor. That was one of their main statutes that now has been eliminated. We need to fill that void. All of our statutes are in place. All of our official misconduct and fraud and all of those tools that we can utilize to go after public corruption are in place. So we are rebuilding a public corruption. So we started from that premise like, okay, there’s going to be a void here. We need to have a vibrant, active public corruption unit. But then as we started to look at our Bureau of Special Prosecution, it became apparent that there were a lot of differences in the way cases were prosecuted. So for example, sex assault and DV is also in special prosecution.

Homicide is in special prosecution. And we had a bunch of hybrid things, consumer fraud, financial crime, elder abuse, gun trafficking, human trafficking. And it became apparent that there was a clear divide there. So the public corruption, consumer fraud, financial crime, cyber crime is huge right now. Human trafficking, gun trafficking, all of the gun strategy that we’re employing relies on federal partnerships. It relies on having the ability to grow across our county line, to go across state lines. We need to be able to tap into all of those resources. So it became very clear that there was a category of crimes that are multi-jurisdiction that are not only will we need to partner with our collar counties, especially with gun crimes and human trafficking, but we’re going to need to be able to tap into our federal resources and we want to fill the void. The US attorneys will not touch a case if the fraud amount is less than several hundred thousand dollars.

Well, that’s a lot of people that can be harmed that we need to be there. We need to be that force who is there addressing those crimes. And as things are evolving with the new federal administration change, we want to be the resource where maybe they’re not getting access to the US attorneys for prosecutions of certain crimes. We need to be ready for that. So we’re just about to launch a new bureau, a multi-jurisdictional bureau, taking care of all those. But then it left us with sex assault and dv. Well, what are we doing with those cases then? So we decided that there has to be a bureau for special victims, victims that need one prosecutor from the beginning to the end of that case. Sex assault victims, domestic violence victims, crimes against children, violent crimes against children, child pornography.

Maggie Mendenhall Casey:

To build that relationship,

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

Yes, to build that trust hate crimes. Those are all crimes that we need to have somebody who can get to know the victims so the victims can trust them, and it can be a little bit less traumatic for them when they come to court. And that’s going to appeal to a different type of state’s attorney, one who really wants to get to know their victims, one who wants to be that person that they can contact when they’re having a difficult time. Anybody who’s ever tried to put a child victim on the stand can tell you, having a relationship with that child is going to make the difference. And having specialized training on how do we address a victim of sexual assault? How do we get a victim of domestic violence to be willing to come forward? How do we do those things? That all requires a special skillset.

So we’re going to put them together in one bureau, and then we’re going to take the homicide division, which is our most experienced trial attorneys. They used to be called gangs, the most experienced trial attorneys in the entire office and deploy them as trainers in our trial division that not only will they be handling the most serious cases, but part of their job is going to be training the trial court room ASAs on how do you work up a murder? How do you do a cross-examination of this type of witness? What are the methods that we can use? And that’s boots on the ground. They’re there with you every day.

Maggie Mendenhall Casey:

Sounds like a fascinating way to make sure that the resources of the office are spread around to some of the newer attorneys. You mentioned the importance of collaboration, for instance, gun prosecutions with the federal government because these type of crimes are inter-jurisdictional, especially with us sharing that border with Indiana that has much more lax gun laws than Chicago or Illinois. Are you optimistic about your office’s ability to collaborate with the federal government regarding gun prosecution or any other type of crime that needs federal collaboration?

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

Yes. In fact, the Chicago gun, it’s called cj. And what it is, is every single stakeholder has a position at CJ Chicago Police Department, the FBI, the A TF, all of those agencies that have a hand in going after gun trafficking and gun crimes, it’s pretty amazing what they can do. They can take a shell casing from a crime scene and they can tell you where that gun has been used in any other crime.

So let’s say we are charging someone with unlawful possession of a machine gun. They can take a shell casing and say, this gun has been used in 20 different crimes all around the city. Well, that puts us in a very different position when we go into first appearance court and we have that information. So CJ had a space for the state’s attorney and we were never there. Nobody was there. And so as soon as we went on a tour of CJ that afternoon, we said, we’re having a state’s attorney here this afternoon. Now we have two state’s attorneys and two investigators over in cj, and we are working in collaboration. So what happens is the US attorneys and the state’s attorneys really sit down and say, who’s going to have a better result on this prosecution? And many times it’s the state’s attorney who’s going to have it because we have the assault weapons ban. We have a higher class of offense. And many times the US attorney will be more suited for it. But we’re starting to collaborate together because if we get all oars in the water rowing in the same direction, we can make significant progress on our gun crimes.

Tracy Brammeier:

Judge, I think to conclude, I wanted to ask a slightly more personal question if that’s okay?

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

Sure.

Tracy Brammeier:

Your job now as state’s attorney is definitely more of a public facing role than being in appellate court justice. I think it would be fair to say,

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

I like to describe appellate court judges as exotic birds. Like people might have heard of them, but they have no idea what they look like, and they’ve never seen one that was the appellate court. You’re right, this job’s a little bit different than

Tracy Brammeier:

That. I like that analogy. How has the transition been for you into this role? And I would say what are the rewards and the challenges that you have experienced or that you foresee being in the public eye the way that you are now?

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

Okay, now, nobody believes us when I say it, but it is absolutely true. I am an introvert. The appellate court was a dream job where all you had to do was read and write all day and never have any human contact. This job is very, very different from that. Probably the hardest thing to get used to was having a security detail because I think I’m a county official, I’m just not that important. And so the first week we did this tour of every one of our facilities. So state’s attorney’s office has 17 different offices. So we did biscuits with the boss where we went out to each and every one. And I kind of gave them an overview of what to expect. And then every single person on our executive staff had to meet every person who was in that courthouse, and we could get a really good sense of how healthy that ecosystem was for each courthouse, which is a long way to tell you why security detail was an issue.

So we had gone with the whole kit and caboodle out to Maywood, and there was like an hour and a half break, and I had to be at a state prosecutor’s association meeting an hour and a half later. So it made no sense to come back downtown. So I came up with this great idea, I need some stuff at Sephora. I got to go to Sephora. So I tell my security detail, just drop me off and I’ll be back in 10 minutes. And they’re like, ma’am, no. That’s not how this works. So I got a 65-year-old ex-Marine walking up and down the aisles of Sephora with me as I had getting Your concealer, your foundation. I was so mortified. But I will tell you that I resisted, resisted, resisted. One of my girlfriends, judge Claire McWilliams, gave me a wig. It was a baseball hat with a blonde curly wig under it. Of course you did. No, don’t tell now. Don’t tell your coverage. No, nobody will come near me with this thing on because I look like a crazy person with this thing on. But I will tell you this, my detail are the most wonderful people in the entire world, and the fact that I get to start the day and end the day with them every day has been truly a gift. I still don’t think I’m that important or that I warrant all this, but that part has really been a good thing.

Tracy Brammeier:

Okay, well, thank you Justice Burke, Madam State’s attorney for being here with us today.

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke:

Judge does outrank state’s attorney. That’s why I’m keeping the judge title.

Tracy Brammeier:

I don’t think anyone blames you. I also want to thank our executive producer, Jen Byrne, Adam Lockwood on Sound, and everyone at the Legal Talk Network Family. Remember, you can follow us and send us comments, questions, episode ideas, or just troll us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at cba, at theBar, all one word. You can also email us at podcast@chicagobar.org. Please also rate and leave us your feedback on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, audible, or wherever you download your podcast at, helps us get the word out. Until next time, for everyone here at the Chicago Bar Association, thank you for joining us and we’ll see you soon at theBar.

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