Obstructing Justice in Chicago: How Kim Foxx Wrecked the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.
Under Foxx, criminals enjoyed an eight-year holiday from prosecution
When Kim Foxx announced she would not present herself for re-election as Cook County State’s Attorney at an April 25, 2023, address to the City Club of Chicago, cheering erupted among Assistant State’s Attorneys (ASAs) in Criminal Prosecutions Bureau offices across Cook County. The bit of festive cheer engulfing the offices, however, was short lived: ASAs soberly realized Foxx’s decision to step down came some 19 months before the end of her term.
In the months since she delivered her remarks at City Club outlining her accomplishments as prosecutor — the spinning of a historic but deeply flawed two-terms — Foxx, to the exception of several high-profile crimes and Big Gulpgate, largely avoided publicity. However, after a lengthy absence from her downtown office, Foxx reemerged from her Flossmoor home in the final days of her term and returned to the George Dunne building regularly to make herself available for laureling by Chicago’s slavish media for legacy-building interviews.
Now that the curtain has fallen on her two terms, it's an appropriate a time to examine the damage Foxx inflicted on the office and Chicago in her eight years serving as State’s Attorney.
Taking office in late 2016 amid the fallout of the Chicago Police Department (CPD) fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald, Foxx arrived at 69 West Washington armed with an uncompromising reform platform: Non-prosecution of low-level offenses, restorative justice, and a range of non-custodial options for those convicted of crime. Upon entering office, whatever presumption of good faith Foxx was extended by both cynical ASAs and a skeptical public swiftly evaporated. In one of her first major policy changes, Foxx raised the felony threshold for retail theft from $300 to $1,000. Though the policy change resulted in a startling upswing in retail theft, the expansion of shop-lifting rings, and an outcry from Illinois Retail Merchants Association, Foxx was unmoved.
Months later, following her retail-theft stunt, Foxx trained her sights on CPD. With Hell in her eyes, Foxx drafted legislation requiring the State Appellate Prosecutor to review all fatal shootings involving Chicago Police. A genuflect to anti-police agitators and irresponsible critics of CPD obsessed with politicizing fatal police shootings, Foxx’s motion exposed officers absolved of any wrongdoing for their role in fatal shootings by independent oversight agencies to further legal jeopardy.
Volunteer clerks
Though Foxx entered office vowing to soften the harder edges of criminal law, she soon made it clear her intent was not incremental reforms on the margins, but rather a sweeping and comprehensive overhaul of the office. Believing true reform could only be achieved by remaking the State’s Attorney’s Office (CCSAO), in one of her first efforts at top-down intervention, Foxx gutted a long-standing volunteer program for law students.
Referred to as the “volunteer clerks,” under this program, local law school students volunteered in the office assisting ASAs and performed simple office tasks. An apprentice program, law students learned the typical routines, procedures, communication methods, and protocols within the CCSAO. While law students enrolled in the program acquired broad experience over the administrative processes of the CCSAO, the program similarly placed practicing ASAs in a unique position to observe young men and women with the commensurate talents to ripen into effective prosecutors.
Foxx, however, shuttered the program, under the rationale the clerks were unpaid and, therefore, callously exploited free labor. ASAs, though, have an entirely different perspective over why Foxx discontinued the program. In Foxx’s paranoid, abstract mind, the volunteer clerks program was the bottom rung of an archaic recruitment system. To Foxx, young law students enrolled in the clerks program were given distinct advantages to employment with CCSAO after graduating from law school. Moreover, in Foxx’s mistrustful worldview, the clerks program tended to be flush with the children or relatives of city officials, the powerful or the influential. While it is true the CCSAO has its clubby ways, for Foxx, this program empowered “the connected” and was part of an old order to be done away with.
Promotions
For decades, advancement in the CCSAO hinged on numerous factors. While demonstrating a deep understanding of relevant legal principles and the ability to apply them effectively in cases was vital, upward movement also hinged on experience handling complex cases, courtroom savviness, and a strong record of successful prosecutions. For many first-year ASAs, their legal careers often begin in either traffic or family court, at which they oversee low-level misdemeanor cases. Once an ASA demonstrated a mastery of the law, and the ability to handle expert witnesses, promotion to manage more complex felonies such as robbery, assault, and eventually reckless homicide, multiple-defendant trials or attempted murders and murders followed.
Prior to Foxx arriving, for junior ASAs — 3rd Chairs — eight to 15 successful felony jury trials were the required minimum for elevation to 2nd Chair. To advance from 2nd Chair to the coveted position of 1st Chair, successfully prosecuting more than 20 trials, one of which was a murder trial, was compulsory. However, under Foxx, Cook County’s woke prosecutor, the gradual movement up the office ladder was no longer entrenched in length of service, accumulated experience or courtroom performance. In contrast, Foxx’s election as State’s Attorney meant the ushering in of the racial spoils system, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
"In my North Side neighborhood, crime rose drastically while Foxx was in office. We had crime before, but never the levels it reached before Foxx became prosecutor. It (crime) didn't go up immediately after she took over, but it did increase. By 2019, the carjackings and armed robberies in my neighborhood were pretty consistent. After the riots, it got much worse. After 2020, even walking on the street during the day had me looking over my shoulder," one North Side resident said.
In Foxx’s warped worldview, minorities were terribly underrepresented in CCSAO. Minorities in few numbers, Foxx insisted, represented oppression. To reverse this deficit of diversity, Foxx’s remedy was the appointment of a CCSAO Chief Diversity Officer. The enforcer-in-chief of woke orthodoxy, the introduction of DEI was followed by a range of policies, training, rules, regulations, and new practices for hiring and promotion. Included in the new hiring and promotion practices was diversity prioritized over talent and experience.
Though Foxx believed DEI would foster an “inclusive environment” and advance “equity” by eliminating biases and counteracting discrimination, its launch in CCSAO led to an unrelenting cascade of incompetent hires and promotions within the office. One of the most morally perverse and damaging fads in the history of CCSAO, imposing DEI and its cookie-cutter orthodoxy should bear part of the blame for a mass exodus of seasoned ASAs from the office and a startling number of ASAs promoted to 1st Chair without trying a murder case in court.
Lamentably, Foxx never saw the disconnect between DEI’s lofty intent and its actual results.
Monetary bail and the prosecution of drug and gun crime
As she campaigned for office in 2016, Foxx repeated her intention to redirect the State’s Attorney’s Office from the prosecution of low-level offenses to concentrate on gun crime. At the time, Foxx asserted budgetary constraints — “office resources”— demanded the prosecution of gun crime be a top priority, at least rhetorically.
However, shortly after assuming office, in a contradiction bordering on hypocrisy, Foxx began issuing instructions to ASAs to put an end to the prosecution of possession of a gun — even an illegal gun — with the explanation gun possession is not a “violent crime.”
A gesture which allowed Chicago’s streets to remain flooded with illegal guns, Foxx further subsidized violence in Chicago by meddling with bail. Prior to Foxx taking office, Cook County judges routinely inquired of prosecutors an amount of monetary bail requested by the State in Bond Court proceedings. A woman ahead of her time, in advance of the passage of the nightmarish SAFE-T Act, Foxx directed prosecutors to halt the practice of tendering monetary bail amounts, even in instances in which prosecutors were directly asked for a bail amount by a Bond Court judge.
Equally disturbing was Foxx’s demand prosecutors no longer seek detention for drug addicts charged with retail theft or possession of a controlled substance. Addicts, Foxx theorized, were not committing a violent crime. While this is true in some instances, and addicts are deserving of sympathy for living a life besieged by drugs, it is worthy to note most addicts were criminals and delinquents long before they became addicted to drugs. Additionally, Foxx refusing to detain addicts allowed the addicted to return to a life of panhandling and petty crime to indulge their habits, forced CPD to contend with the addict and the victim of their crimes, and removed leverage from police and prosecutors to induce addicts into treatment programs.
“Foxx’s damage to Cook County was widespread and devastating. From an office robbed of morale and scandals involving B-List celebrities, to leading with an ideological drive to uproot the very foundational principles of our criminal justice system, Kim Foxx’s failed experiment of “reverse justice” made us less safe and yes, cost lives.
The greatest tragedy is the fact that for the last eight years, Cook County’s top prosecutor not only failed to be an advocate for the victims of crime, but actively pushed them aside in her effort to appear as the savior of offenders,” Alderman Silvana Tabares (23).
Foxx’s decision to pursue no monetary bail for addicts had tragic consequences: It defied the wishes of family struggling to cope with the addictions of a loved one. According to ASAs, Foxx’s insistence to eliminate cash bail overrode family members who appeared in court to appeal to both prosecutors and public defenders to keep bail in place. To family concerned with the welfare of relatives suffering the ravages of addiction, Cermak Health Services at Cook County Jail was a viable alternative to mental health or addiction problems, with 90- or 120-day detox programs which could benefit them. Though far from an ideal living situation, Cook County Jail is one avenue to mandate help in getting clean and have necessary anti-addiction medications. Despite the suffering, Foxx remained indifferent to the pleas of family on behalf of loved ones.
Foxx’s decision to decriminalize drugs by disbanding the narcotics bureau had profound consequences for CPD efforts to rein in crime. While it is a fact not all drug addicts double as dealers, addicts do tend to linger in areas in which gangs are known to operate, or dealers peddle drugs. These areas are also considered by CPD to be free-fire zones in gang turf wars. Since drug dealers are not in the habit of dialing 911 to report a rival gang raiding a drug house or robbing a street dealer, they arm themselves. As one can suppose, considering the homicidal instincts of gang members, shooting incidents frequently occur in blighted quarters of Chicago.
Instead of using the law as a weapon to defang criminal gangs, Foxx flagrantly ignored discretionary authority and permitted lawlessness in high-crime areas to flourish. For those who have little understanding of gang life, gangs are not a normal enemy. Gangs place no value on human life, only lifestyle, which is a paroxysm of fast money, drugs, violence and rabid assassination. Today, criminal gangs are responsible for over 80 percent of violent crime in Chicago. Sadly, many Chicago youth are lured to gang life with the promise of protection and brotherhood. As gangs mount an aggressive effort to secure neighborhood hegemony, gang elders often designate juveniles to work open air drug markets and carry out assassinations of rival gang members. These shooting incidents occur with a regularity and are known to claim the life of innocent bystanders.
Prior to Foxx becoming State’s Attorney, following a shooting incident in gang infested areas, CPD regularly took addicts and low-level dealers into custody on the charge of possession. Arrestees were taken into custody with the full knowledge their detainment would be brief but could last as many as three days as family members would require more than 48 hours to amass cash for bail.
This period of custody, however, was invaluable for CPD to accumulate information on shootings or other incidents of violent crime through the interviews of witnesses. CPD investigators used the time wisely and incentivized witnesses’ stay: If a witness cooperated with investigators and their statements were reliable, they would be offered a cooperation agreement, which would avert an appearance in Bond Court. In instances in which an arrestee was unable to furnish information on the incident CPD was exploring, the arrestee often possessed vital information on separate violent crimes which had taken place.
Despite gangs committing grand carnage on the streets, Foxx viewed the brief detainment of witnesses to these or other crimes as a monumental injustice. To cut out this tumor of injustice, Foxx’s pursued a policy of declining to seek monetary bail for low-level offenses. This policy stance swept away any inducement to cooperate with CPD in its investigations. Worse, as gang leaders learned the CCSAO was less likely to charge juvenile gun offenders as adults — a discretionary authority vested in Foxx — juveniles were ordained by gang chieftains to discharge more violent acts, often with firearms. The results, naturally, were catastrophic: Homicides surged, CPD was denied vital intelligence to assist their attempts to solve crimes, and gangs continued to devastate neighborhoods with impunity.
Over and above her reversal of proven prosecutorial strategies to thwart crime, Foxx altering asset forfeiture guidelines allowed criminal gangs and organized drug cartels to operate without fear of the law disrupting, dismantling, or deterring their criminal organizations.
Smollettgate
When Kim Foxx entered office, she vowed to uphold human dignity in the administration of justice. Though Foxx had often asserted the CCSAO intended to end an uneven distribution of justice, the Jussie Smollett hate hoax exposed the ease with which Foxx was willing to wink at crime and scrap the basic principle of accountability in the justice system.
While Smollett’s tall tale is not worth rehashing in full detail, the crux of Smollett’s fiction begins with the claim the B-actor was the victim of a racist and homophobic crime carried out by two MAGA bullies in the dark of night as a polar vortex cut through Chicago. When CPD accumulated evidence to conclude Smollett had fabricated the entire incident, Foxx concocted a recusal from the case before her office unexpectedly dropped all charges in the matter.
A mockery of the justice system, under Foxx’s standard of justice — rules she unethically flouted — prosecutors accepted a fine from Smollett in the form of an un-discharged bond and community service at Operation PUSH even as they alleged the office had no charge under which Smollett could be successfully prosecuted. In sum: Smollett agreed to a plea agreement without ever having to plead guilty to a crime.
After an uproar and accusations Smollett had received solicitous treatment, a judge ordered the appointment of special prosecutor to review the case. Found guilty on five of six counts of felony disorderly conduct, each tied to filing a false report to police, Smollett was sentenced to 150 days behind bars. Smollett eventually prevailed in court and had the conviction reversed on appeal.
"I trained to be an attorney. My desire was to bring justice to victims, to administer individual justice with empathy and compassion, but always within the bounds of the law. As I worked under Kim Foxx, I learned she had a far different view of how justice was achieved. Foxx doesn't believe in a single standard of justice. Foxx believes that there are brackets in the justice system and that criminals are in the top and victims of crime are in the bottom getting the least consideration," a current Assistant State's Attorney.
A story of a rule maker not following their own rules, Foxx shrugged off criticism over her handling of the case and, predictably, branded her critics racist. Foxx later penned an erratic op-ed piece in the Sun-Times, the sole purpose of which was to absolve herself of any wrongdoing or ethical lapse, and to ridiculously declare Smollett’s conviction the somber consequence of an ill-defined, aggrieved group determined to exact mob justice.
Through the special prosecutor in the Smollett case did find evidence of which established “substantial abuse of discretion and operational failures by the CCSAO” in the non-prosecution of the initial case, Foxx was also revealed to have repeatedly lied over personal communications with Smollett family members. While the special prosecutor in the matter, Dan Webb, declined to charge Foxx criminally, Webb did find Foxx had impugned herself ethically, and he eventually referred Foxx to the Illinois Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission (ARDC) for ethics violations.
Although Foxx managed to avoid censure from the ARDC for her conduct, the Smollett incident did great (if hidden) damage to Chicago. Paramount among the harm is doubt cast upon legitimate claims of bigotry or violence against disfavored groups. Second, Foxx’s unethical role in the Smollett matter exposed the hypocrisy of the justice system she oversaw. Third, Foxx’s part in the Smollett case exposed her justice system was tiered, with a lower level occupied by a large segment of the population; and the other reserved for those connected to Foxx and the Obamas.
Wrongful convictions
Of all her failures as State’s Attorney, nowhere was Foxx’s roguery more evident than in her determination to free convicted killers from behind bars.
If we consider statistical probabilities, it is conceivable the criminal justice system occasionally errs in the prosecution of crime and mistakenly imprisons an innocent individual. Often, an exoneration hinges on a subsequent calculation facts were suppressed, witnesses had provided false statements, or procedural flaws as the case moved through the courts. In these cases, exonerations occur with the decision to forego an attempt at retrial as a matter of fairness. The outcome of an exoneration is new evidence which is not subject to testing and the accused is freed in the interest of justice.
Under Kim Foxx’s paranoid, political ethos, Cook County’s justice system was rigged against minority groups, all CPD detectives are racist slave catchers, and punishment for violent crime is entirely motivated by racism. A woman incandescent with rage, Foxx sought to return to the past and “correct past injustices.” Posing as the cavalry coming to the rescue of justice, Foxx embarked on a crusade to review countless cases in which the defendant claimed innocence. Though many of the inmates had criminal pasts, were confronted in court with an entire catalog of damning evidence, and were convicted by a jury of peers, Foxx remained convinced of their innocence.
No one is simply enveloped by the criminal justice system for the crime of murder or other serious felonies. To convict an individual of a crime, a lengthy legal process takes place. Investigations can take months. Following the accumulation of evidence, police present the facts to the State’s Attorney’s office. Once an individual is charged, the matter moves into a courtroom, where an arrestee is granted a forum to present their case before a judge and jury. If convicted, a protracted appeals follows. A vital safeguard in the justice system, an Appellate Court carefully surveys the manner in which investigators, prosecutors, and the presiding judge fulfilled their obligations irreproachably to ensure no denial of justice had occurred.
However, a movement blossomed in Chicago, known as the "wrongful conviction" movement.
Individual attorneys and law firms, the wrongful conviction movement is a faction with infinite patience, yet when they launch a foray on the justice system, they deploy their skills with an abandon and a vengeance. Though decades have passed and witnesses or investigators originally involved with the case may be underground, the wrongful conviction movement’s ploy is to locate a prosecution witness, who, years later, attests they were intimidated or suffered physical abuse at the hands of CPD detectives.
Against this backdrop, the charge of government misconduct, however flimsy or far-fetched, draws substantial attention from sympathetic media, who seize on uncompelling statements to craft deeply misleading, highly emotive news stories to strengthen the claim of widespread abuse among police detectives.
Once the charge circulates throughout Chicago, the State’s Attorney’s office is saddled with a case in which an error or misconduct is alleged. Prosecutors are then obligated to retrace steps to seek out flaws in the presentation of the original case. This chore often proves difficult as many central figures in the case have died, moved away or are otherwise unavailable to play a role. It proves doubly difficult as some witnesses who appeared in court decades before are now reluctant to reinsert themselves again over fear of retaliation, harassment, or violence. Other witnesses simply develop an acute case of amnesia.
"I served with CPD for seven of the eight years Foxx was prosecutor. We'd arrest, bring charges, and they would be dropped. This was her plan all along. It was Foxx's way of trying to discredit CPD," one retired Sergeant of Police stated.
Though the “wrongful conviction” movement developed decades ago, it earned few victories, owing in large part to the City of Chicago’s dogged resistance to the implausible claims in court. Wrongful convictions also faced an enormous hurdle in then-State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, who, after carefully reviewing the cases, determined the original convictions legally sound and secure, and dismissed protestations of innocence from individuals convicted of serious crimes as outlandish or baseless.
Two events then occurred to make it possible for the “wrongful conviction” movement to prosper. First, under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Chicago abandoned its court battles against the wrongful conviction claims. The city’s decision to renounce its court challenges and quietly settle with civil rights law firms occurred simultaneously with many attorneys and civil rights law firms involved with the “wrongful conviction” movement filling elected officials’ campaign coffers.
Second, Kim Foxx easily overcame Chris Pfannkuche in the 2016 race for state’s attorney. A goal which had long eluded the “wrongful conviction” movement, with Foxx’s election, a cascade of litigation followed her assuming office. During Foxx’s two terms, over 250 convictions were overturned, including mass exonerations issued to those whose convictions for relatively low drug violations were tied to former CPD Sergeant Ronald Watts. While it is fair to say the vacating of convictions involving Watts were defensible, with regard to convicted killers Foxx released from prison, here is the rub: In “wrongful convictions” under Foxx, rarely was an individual exonerated on the strength of exculpatory evidence such as DNA test results emerging decades later. Rather, the basis for nearly every exoneration was the charge of CPD investigators coercing confessions from suspects. The notion CPD investigators ran amok and joyfully forced false confessions from hundreds of murder suspects strains credulity.
Aside from freeing convicted killers, though deterrence forms the backbone of criminal and civil law, Foxx never pursued perjury charges against witnesses in exoneration cases.
Forgotten in the midst of Foxx’s rip-roaring exoneration blowout are the families of the victims of these terrible crimes. Unlike killers freed from behind bars who went on to sue Chicago and collect a financial windfall, the families of murder victims are victimized once again, robbed of closure, and forced again to experience heartbreak — this time as they witness their loved one’s murderer freed from behind bars and glorified by media.
Criminals always had a friend in Kim Foxx
Like all things human, State’s Attorneys who preceded Foxx and the office itself were imperfect. However, the condition of the CCSAO prior to Foxx’s arrival was never such the office demanded a complete overhaul. To Foxx, the CCSAO was, nonetheless, in need of an ideological overhaul to produce ideological results she sought, mainly advancing the objectives of social justice over and above the conduct of actual justice. At this, Foxx was a massive success.
At the one role she was elected to perform — prosecuting criminals — Foxx was a spectacular failure. A woman whose mind was poisoned by revenge, Foxx spent eight years waging a scorched-earth, no-holds-barred war on the prosecution of crime. To wage this war, Foxx used the office to pursue selective justice, carry out personal vendettas, and take up self-righteous crusades.
While Foxx’s two terms have come to a merciful end, and we can only celebrate her departure from office, she does not leave behind a complicated legacy. As prosecutor, Foxx had an obligation to serve as an objective referee as State’s Attorney. Rather than serve in the capacity of objective referee, Foxx was instead one of the players, and always on the wrong side of the law.
