U.S. District Judge James Zagel, who oversaw famous cases including the corruption trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, died Saturday after a long illness. He was 82.
Judge Zagel presided over thousands of cases during his nearly 30-year career on the bench and also kept busy outside the courtroom. He played a judge in the 1989 film “Music Box” and wrote a novel about a federal judge who robs the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
“Jim Zagel was a Renaissance man — a lover of the arts, music and literature,” Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, chief judge of the Northern District of Illinois, said in a written statement announcing Judge Zagel’s death.
She said it was clear why Zagel played a judge in the movie.
“Anyone who knew him could see why: He looked the part, and he truly inhabited the role, reflecting the best of the third branch in his wisdom, common sense and dry wit,” Pallmeyer said.
Judge Zagel was born in Chicago in 1941. As a child, he walked to Bears games at Wrigley Field from his family’s Lakeview apartment, according to a court biography. He played tennis at the University of Chicago, where he received a master’s degree in philosophy in 1962.
After Judge Zagel graduated from Harvard Law School in 1965, he became an assistant Cook County state’s attorney.
Later, as a federal judge, he presided over numerous high-profile cases.
In 2011, Judge Zagel handed Blagojevich a stunning 14-year prison sentence for his attempt to sell an appointment to fill the U.S. Senate seat of then-President-elect Barack Obama. He told the former governor, “The fabric of Illinois is torn and disfigured and not easily or quickly repaired.”
Blagojevich appealed and was given a new sentencing hearing. But Judge Zagel left Blagojevich’s daughters in tears when he again sentenced the former governor to 14 years in 2016.
Judge Zagel also oversaw the landmark Operation Family Secrets trial of the Chicago Outfit that led to the convictions of Chicago mobsters Joseph “Joey the Clown” Lombardo and Frank Calabrese Sr. In 2009, Judge Zagel found Calabrese Sr. responsible for 13 murders and sentenced him to life in prison.
He presided over the trials of Cook County Undersheriff James Dvorak and the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s half-brother, Noah Robinson.
In 1966, Judge Zagel was on the prosecution team for the case against Richard Speck, accused of murdering eight student nurses at a Chicago apartment. “The Speck case put Zagel at the forefront of forensic science and psychology,” the court said in its obituary.
Two years later, he argued the case of Witherspoon vs. Illinois before the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court ruled that although jurors who say they will not impose the death sentence can be dismissed, jurors who simply oppose the death sentence as a personal belief cannot.
One of the more unusual turns in Judge Zagel’s career was when he wrote a novel, “Money to Burn.” In the book, a federal judge plans and carries out a robbery of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
When the book was released in 2002, Judge Zagel told the Chicago Sun-Times why he turned to writing crime fiction: “Throughout my life, I’ve been on every side of the law except the wrong one. I’ve been a prosecutor. I’ve investigated cases. I’ve been a police chief. I’ve been a trial judge. The one thing I’ve never done is commit a crime.
“If you see this stuff come before you day after day after day, you sometimes wonder what it would be like. Not so much what would lead somebody to do it but what would it be like. And since I’m unwilling to commit a crime, the only way to find out basically was to write a book like this.”
Judge Zagel also served in Gov. James Thompson’s administration, first in 1979 as director of the Illinois Department of Revenue, and as director of the Illinois State Police, where he was responsible for the investigation of the still-unsolved Tylenol murders.
Brendan Kelly, current director of the Illinois State Police, said Judge Zagel’s leadership left an enduring culture of ethical, professional, intelligent enforcement of the law.
“Every ISP director and everyone who serves in our agency aspires to meet his standards, whether they realize it or not, and that is a hell of a legacy,” Kelly said in a written statement.
Judge Zagel left the Illinois State Police in 1987 when he was appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan. He stepped down from his full-time role in 2016 when he assumed senior status as a judge in the Northern District of Illinois.
He is survived by his wife of 44 years, Margaret Maxwell Zagel.
