FIRST ROW (from left to right): Judge Carol Howard, Judge Carl Anthony, Judge Adrienne Davis, Lionel Jean-Baptiste and Judge Yvonne Coleman. SECOND ROW (from left to right): Judge Tommy Brewer, Judge Erika Orr, Judge Robert Harris, Judge Erica Reddick and Judge Kimberly Lewis. THIRD ROW (from left to right): Judge Preston Jones, Judge Debra Seaton, Judge Iesha Gray, Judge Toya Harvey and Judge Carl Boyd. FOURTH ROW (from left to right): Judge Tiana Blakely, Judge Marian Perkins, Judge Arthur Wesley “Wes” Willis and Judge Barbara Dawkins.
In courtroom 702 at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse sat Judge Carol Howard. For 15 minutes, she listened to Prosecutor Tom Dombrowski argue why she should reconsider her decision to grant Roosevelt Myles his certificate of innocence. With no evidence to link Myles to a murder on the West Side 32 years ago, Judge Howard stood her ground and told Dombrowski no.
After waiting 22 years just for a hearing under three judges, Myles was finally an innocent man with a clean record.
Had Judge Howard not presided over his post-conviction case, he would most likely never have gotten as far in his marathon battle for justice and clearing his name.
It is important to note that Judge Howard is Black. She presides over criminal cases at the Leighton Criminal Court Building.
She is just one of five Black judges out of 39 judges at the notorious facility, where for decades, many Black men and women have endured rigged trials, biased judges, and dishonest prosecutors before being wrongfully convicted and hauled off to jail to spend decades behind bars.
In what is known to many as “Crook County,” home to over five million residents and numerous wrongful conviction cases, there are too few Black judges on the bench, especially at the Leighton Criminal Court Building.
On November 5, voters will decide whether to retain 76 judges in the Cook County Circuit Court system.
About 19 of those judges are Black, but most of them serve in courtrooms in suburbs outside Chicago, including Markham and Homewood.
Only four serve where Black judges are most needed: the Leighton Criminal Court building on the Near West Side. It’s a dark legal factory that produces many wrongful conviction cases that drag on under judges who usually don’t look like Judge Howard, who is rated as “highly qualified” by bar associations.
In addition to Howard, the Black judges who serve at the Leighton Criminal Court building include Erica L. Reddick, 59, who was appointed to the bench in 2010 and elected in 2012. In 2021, Reddick became the first woman to be named presiding judge of the Criminal Division, where she oversees the administration of the Leighton Criminal Courthouse and more than 40 judges hearing felony cases.
Another Black judge presiding at Leighton is Adrienne Elaine Davis, 56. She was appointed to the Circuit Court in 2017 and won election in 2018 in the 2nd subcircuit, covering the South Side of Chicago and the South suburbs. She currently hears felony cases at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse and previously handled a variety of cases in the first municipal district.
Other Black judges at the Leighton Criminal Court building are Arthur Wesley Willis and Barbara Dawkins, an associate judge who is not elected but voted in by other judges.
Judges at the Leighton Criminal Court building serve six-year terms. Circuit Court judges hear a variety of cases, from traffic tickets to personal injury, to child welfare, to criminal cases. But in recent years, as more and more wrongful conviction cases emerge, there is a strong need for Black judges or judges who are aware the of damage that police misconduct has on innocent individuals.
Judge Howard’s impact on Myles’ case shows a strong need for judges who look like her. The Leighton Criminal Court Building is infested with biased judges who either allow, or help prosecutors convict innocent Black defendants too poor to hire private attorneys to effectively represent them in court and serve as watchdogs over fair trials.
To counterbalance a biased criminal justice system, Black judges can bring fairness and compassion to the judiciary, where the qualities are sorely needed, especially in wrongful conviction cases. Such cases are usually long and drag on for years under judges who often show favoritism to overzealous and dishonest prosecutors who are more interested in winning a case than achieving justice.
Roosevelt Myles’ case is a prime example. During his decades-long journey to clear his name, Myles had three judges and a rogue prosecutor who was determined to keep him as a convicted felon on paper.
Myles’ first two judges were white men who showed their bias while on the bench. The first one, Judge Dennis Porter, retired in 2019 after an appeals court sent Myles’ case back to Porter after he dismissed it following a Google search he did in an attempt to link Myles to the crime.
The second judge, William Raines, was a former police officer who often sided with prosecutor Dombrowski and didn’t challenge the many false statements he made in Myles’ case. Raines retired after the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board in 2022 charged him with five counts of judicial misconduct for disparaging Myles’ attorney, an act that was overheard on a hot mic.
Myles’ case then fell into Judge Carol Howard’s hands through a lottery system, but Myles and many of his supporters believe the assignment to Howard was an act of God.
Under Howard, Myles’ case picked up steam. She put an end to all the delays and often ruled against Dombrowski and saw through the many lies he told in the courtroom, to the relief of Myles’ attorneys and relatives. Earlier this year, another Black judge at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, Erica Reddick, granted certificates of innocence to brothers Reginald Henderson and Sean Tyler, also convicted of murder based on tortured confessions obtained by Detective Burge’s underlings, and to Darien Harris, who had been convicted based on eyewitness testimony from a legally blind witness.
In 2021, Reddick sent eight cases tied to former Chicago police Detective Kriston Kato for further post-conviction proceedings to Will County, citing Kato’s marriage to Cook County Criminal Division Judge Mary Margaret Brosnahan.
Brosnahan is the same judge involved in a wrongful conviction case that was reported by the Chicago Crusader.
In 2022, the appellate court reversed her denial of a post-conviction hearing to Selma Butler, who was 17 when he was convicted in a trial that lasted just 45 minutes. The evidence against Butler was an unrecorded statement he allegedly made to police and recanted testimony of a 14-year-old boy, who was forced by police to confess that Butler stabbed a woman 65 times in the Robert Taylor Holmes housing project. After an appeals court sent Butler’s case back to Brosnahan, she recused herself from his post-conviction case.
When it comes to individuals who have been shut up, beat up, and locked up in the “False Confession Capital” of the nation, the media almost always limit their coverage to just the exoneration or the settlement.
Last month, a jury awarded Marcel Brown over $50 million. He had been convicted of helping kill 19-year-old Paris Jackson in Amundsen Park. In June, the city of Chicago awarded $50 million to the Marquette Park, a group of Black teenagers who, in 1995, were convicted for the murders of two owners of a used car sales business near the Marquette Park neighborhood.
The most difficult challenge in these cases is the string of hearings and endless delays that have left many unresolved wrongful conviction cases floating in Cook County’s notorious criminal justice system.
The Cook County States Attorney’s Office under Kim Foxx has thrown out 250 convictions in the past eight years, but their efforts just scratch the surface.
According to some reports, there are still over 200 unresolved wrongful conviction cases in Illinois, most of them in Cook County. The Crusader has covered many wrongful conviction cases over the years, but as the paper’s coverage has increased, so have the phone calls and letters from individuals who want their stories told.
It’s been well documented that the Leighton Criminal Court Building, home of the criminal justice system, is riddled with systemic racism and pro-police bias.
In her acclaimed book, “Crook County,” author Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve chronicles her experiences as a Northwestern Law School student who watched and heard judges make racist statements against Black defendants behind closed doors and even on the bench. In many instances, the judges are white former prosecutors and police officers who fuel a culture of racism at the Leighton Criminal Court Building.
In 2023, Judge Lawrence T. Flood retired after the Crusader published a story that revealed he served as a police officer for 14 years before being appointed to the bench. The investigation came at a time when Flood was presiding over the case of Dashonn Maggette and his fight with police officers Patrick Forbes and Michael Hudson.
The officers said Maggette had a gun, but throughout the trial, Judge Flood kept sealed from the media, including the Crusader, a ballistic test report that ruled out Maggette having a weapon. Maggette was convicted in 2023 and was scheduled to be sentenced on Thursday this week.
In 1999, the Chicago Tribune published a scathing two-part investigation that uncovered a game prosecutors had going called “niggers by the pound.” It was a game where prosecutors made bets on who they could prosecute and lock up the fastest at the Leighton Criminal Court building.