Who will replace Kim Foxx as Cook County’s top prosecutor?

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In all likelihood, the Cook County state’s attorney’s race will be decided in the March 19 primary, when voters will choose between two Democrats running to replace Kim Foxx.

During her time in office, Foxx became a national figure, albeit a polarizing one, who has had a significant impact on criminal justice in Cook County. Under Foxx, the office overturned hundreds of convictions of people who were victims of alleged police misconduct and undertook efforts to vacate convictions for low-level marijuana offenses after the state legalized recreational marijuana. She also was an important supporter of the SAFE-T Act, which made Illinois the first state in the nation to eliminate cash bail.

But Foxx also faced criticism from the Chicago police union and former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, particularly over her handling of the Jussie Smollett case. The actor ultimately was found guilty of lying to police about being the victim of a hate crime attack that prosecutors said he staged. Foxx dropped the initial charges against Smollett, though the actor was later charged again. Earlier this month, Smollett asked the Illinois Supreme Court to overturn his conviction.

Foxx also clashed Emanuel’s successor, Lori Lightfoot, and her police superintendent, David Brown, on cases where her office declined to approve felony charges.

“I had a job to do, a mission to serve, and I believe I accomplished that mission,” Foxx said of her legacy during a speech in January.

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

Voters will now choose between Clayton Harris III, a former political aide and a lecturer at the University of Chicago, and Eileen O’Neill Burke, a former criminal defense lawyer, judge and appellate court justice.

Both candidates tout their early work as prosecutors in the office. Harris was an assistant state’s attorney for about four years, and Burke was a prosecutor for 10 years.

Harris went on to be an assistant to former Mayor Richard M. Daley, a chief of staff at the Illinois Department of Transportation and a top aide to ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Recently, he has been a lecturer at the University of Chicago.

“It’s important that you have someone who has led offices of this size, if not larger, before,” Harris says. “If you’re going to be managing almost 800 attorneys … you need someone who can do that, as well as manage the budget of the office and the politics of the office. I’ve done this.”

Burke, on the other hand, has never strayed far from the courtroom.

After her time as a prosecutor, Burke went into private practice as a criminal defense attorney. She was elected as a circuit court judge in 2008 and joined the First District Appellate Court in 2016, which she stepped down from last summer in order to run for state’s attorney.

“This election is going to have a lot of consequences and that’s why I was willing to step down, because we can fix this,” Burke said.

Whoever wins will be in a good position to become Foxx’s successor. The likely opponents in the general election in November are Republican Bob Fioretti, a former alderperson who placed fourth in the 2020 primary against Foxx, and Libertarian candidate Andrew Charles Kopinski.

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‘My platform is safety and justice’

A “military brat,” Harris says his family instilled a desire in him to work toward the public good.

With a college background in engineering and aerospace, Harris’ early career included working for the Pentagon. But later while in law school at Howard University, he said he took an opportunity to intern for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, which recruited on his campus.

“I believed in the mission,” Harris says, explaining why he went to work under former State’s Attorney Richard Devine after graduation. He says he brushed off comments people made that he was “throwing away three good years of Howard Law by going to prosecute.”

“That’s when I explained to people that the person with the most power in the courtroom is the state’s attorney and the assistant state’s attorneys,” he says. “They’re the ones who make a determination on should we move forward with a case, how do we move forward with a case, what are the charges that are being brought and what are the recommendations for sentencing.”

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

As an assistant state’s attorney, Harris worked on criminal appeals, as well as narcotics and traffic court cases, but didn’t stay long. One reason was the experience of seeing defendants who looked like him — Black men — shuffled through the system.

“I was looking for more hope in our criminal justice system,” Harris says.

He said those experiences, as well as his recent work lecturing at the University of Chicago on policing and race, played a role in his desire to return to criminal justice.

“My platform is safety and justice,” he says. “I believe we can be safe and just at the same time.

“I think the way we do that is we hold everyone accountable, but we hold everyone accountable appropriately,” Harris says.

Harris’ most concrete policy proposal is to create a new division within the office that would address “root causes” of crime. Harris has said that the new bureau could lead investigations into everything from straw purchases of firearms that he says contribute to city violence, to leaders of retail and catalytic converter theft.

This would be different from the office’s current Special Prosecutions Bureau, he says. But on this policy and others, Harris is vague on the details.

When asked for more detailed policy goals, the Harris campaign directed a reporter to his campaign website, which lists priorities that are essentially just the typical duties of the prosecutor’s office, like working with state and federal law enforcement on investigations, holding domestic abusers accountable and committing new resources to various initiatives.

Harris, who comes across as mild-mannered, soft-spoken and thoughtful, sells himself primarily as a good manager. He says his years working in government makes him “uniquely qualified” to oversee the nation’s second largest prosecutor’s office, adding that his experience in Springfield will help him get legislation important to the office passed.

A bill proposed by two Chicago state legislators that would require that a lawyer be present for police to interrogate any juvenile could go further, Harris says, by also ensuring that a juvenile also could not waive having an attorney present.

Harris has received the endorsement of the county’s Democratic party, controlled by Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who also threw her support behind Foxx.

Thirty years on the court system

With 30 years of experience in the court system, Burke says she’s been tested and proven.

“I’ve seen the criminal justice system from every angle you can see it from, and I know what works and what doesn’t work,” Burke says.

Her confidence and knowledge of the legal system shows in conversation, where she seems much more comfortable discussing policy than Harris, firing off her arguments like a trial lawyer.

The former justice speaks in stronger language about crime than Harris, claiming she hears from voters that are afraid to go downtown, or out at night at all — not just in Chicago, but anywhere in the county.

Burke says that’s because “the criminal justice system just isn’t working right now.” As a result, Chicago “should be booming right now,” but instead “you have businesses and people leaving and they’re leaving because of crime.”

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

But despite tough talk about seeking detentions and taking a harder line against retail theft, Burke doesn’t say she would make significant changes to Foxx’s policies.

Asked if the office needs a course correction after Foxx, Burke answered that she wasn’t running against Foxx and heaped praise on the current state’s attorney, in particular her support of restorative justice courts and diversion programs.

“I think those programs make sense, their recidivism rates are significantly less, they are actually having success,” Burke says.

Burke also says she supports the SAFE-T Act, which eliminated the use of cash bail and set a presumption of release for criminal defendants awaiting trial.

Burke says she will push hard for detentions in cases of violence, but would not say if she thought prosecutors were not aggressive enough in pursuing detentions. She suggests she would use the state’s new assault weapons ban to go after illegal gun offenders, though a first offense of the law is only a misdemeanor.

The First District Appellate Court, where Burke recently sat, has shown a willingness to throw out detention orders when they feel circuit court judges aren’t following the law’s demand that they set the “least restrictive conditions” for detention.

Burke says assistant state’s attorneys in criminal courtrooms are overburdened, causing cases to proceed at a slower pace.

“We need to get fully staffed,” she says. “That’s where I want to focus my time and attention, is recruiting and marketing the state’s attorney’s office.”

To do that, Burke says she’d called on a network of retired judges to help staff an educational unit to help mold prosecutors.

“I want to recruit not only the hard-charging attorney who wants to get a masters degree in trial work,” Burke says, “but I want to recruit a different type of law student, one who might want to learn how to work with multiple governmental agencies in how to get people back on track and restored as productive citizens.”

Candidate questionnaires

Clayton Harris III, Cook County State’s Attorney

Candidate questionnaire to help you weigh your choices in the March 19, 2024 Illinois primary.

Eileen O’Neill Burke, Cook County State’s Attorney

Candidate questionnaire to help you weigh your choices in the March 19, 2024 Illinois primary.

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By Tony Arnold | WBEZ