In the News

Block Club Chicago reporter Maxwell Evans wrote about our work to take take traditional criminal legal defense out of the courthouse and into the community to provide more collaborative representation and services. We will be launching our first community defense center, the Freedom Defense Center of Roseland, in 2024. Full story and link to the article in Block Club are below.

The Cook County Public Defender's Office is featured in a short film about violence interruption.

Lawyers for two reputed gang members on trial for the 2015 killing of 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee unsuccessfully sought a mistrial on Wednesday, incensed that Chicago police withheld what they considered key information from them until this week.

The Cook County Public Defender wants to undo a court decision that alows holding preteens in custody. The case involved a 12-year-old boy who was arrested last year for his alleged involvement in an armed robbery.

Cook County Public Defender Amy Campanelli talks about the repercussions for looters in Chicago.

WGN Radio’s Karen Conti is with Cook County Public Defender Amy Campanelli to talk about the criminal justice reform bill signed by Governor Pritzker this week, eliminating cash bail. Amy also shares the many services offered by the Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender.

The Criminal Courthouse at 26th and California is reopening post-pandemic. COVID-19 brought seismic changes to the Cook County court system. And after more than a year, a reopening reckoning is close at hand.

Dozens of children have been unjustly held in the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center even though judges ordered them released. That is because the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services says it has nowhere to send them. Andrea Lubelfeld, Chief of our Juvenile Division, spoke out about the problem in a story for WBEZ.

In this podcast, Public Defender Mitchell speaks about racially targeted enforcement of gun possession statutes. In Cook County, racially disproportionate enforcement of gun rules sends thousands of Black people to prison because they do not have or cannot get the required licenses, not because they've been accused of harming someone.

It’s a scene that happens every weekday at the Cook County Jail: a bus transports a group of inmates, all handcuffed, to court in the Chicago suburbs. Most of those trips are uneventful; detainees are brought to their hearings and return to jail without incident. But in some cases, those buses ignite the kinds of violence the jail is designed to prevent.