Cook County Public Defender, Sharone R. Mitchell says the Pretrial Fairness Acts has impacted the clients our office represents.
News
Illinois abolished cash bail and drove down the population at the Cook County jail. Under the county’s top prosecutor, it’s rising again.
The Cook County public defender’s office had already laid the groundwork to represent individuals in immigration cases, but an increase in detention under the Trump administration last year forced them to adjust.
As a young frontline public defender in the courtroom, Sharone R. Mitchell, Jr., often imagined how the Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender could better serve its constituents. Now, as the agency’s head, he’s realizing that vision.
A pair of Illinois bills seeks to clarify the language in that statute, aiming to ensure that after program completion, judges can issue sentence credit, whether it was completed in a state prison or a county jail.
Keshia Golden says she fatally stabbed Calvin Sidney in 2022 when he attacked her after their baby shower. Now a mother to a 3-year-old, Golden still faces murder charges in a case her lawyers argue amounts to self-defense.
Twice-yearly driver’s license reinstatement expos connect motorists with lawyers and advocates working to restore their driving privileges and relieving hardships.
A year after the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (CCSAO) under Eileen O’Neill Burke directed prosecutors to stop the practice of sending low-level, nonviolent gun possession cases to Cook County’s Restorative Justice Community Courts, or RJCC, O’Neill Burke reversed the policy and resumed referring certain gun-possession cases to the RJCC.
Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke has instructed her office to resume sending some people with gun possession charges to the county’s Restorative Justice Community Courts (RJCC), which reroute young people with nonviolent charges from criminal courts to an alternative program. Upon completion, the charge is dismissed.
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.