Stymied by all those unfamiliar names at the bottom of your ballot? We’re here to help. Vote “no” on three judges by punching 228, 232 and 314.
In Illinois, circuit court judges are elected to the bench. After that, they face a yes-or-no vote for retention every six years. It takes a 60 percent “no” vote to oust a sitting judge. The last time that happened was 1990.
This year, 59 Cook County Circuit Court judges are seeking retention. They’re near the end of the ballot, listed in seemingly random order. How are you supposed to cast an informed vote?
Most people don’t. They just shrug and vote yes (or no) on all of them. Or they leave them all blank. Or they guess. Some truly terrible judges have been re-upped repeatedly by voters who simply didn’t have a clue.
There’s no excuse for that.
The Chicago Bar Association, the Chicago Council of Lawyers, the Illinois State Bar Association and other bar groups perform a valuable public service by screening and rating judicial candidates. Their findings are available at voteforjudges.org.
You’ll find candidates’ responses to our questionnaires for these and other offices, and all of our endorsements to date, at chicagotribune.com/candidates.
For its judicial endorsements, the Tribune Editorial Board relies on the bar groups’ evaluations and on its own research, including discussions with lawyers and judges who know the candidates.
Based on all of the above, the Tribune recommends a “yes” vote for all judges seeking retention except these three:
(Use the punch number provided to vote “no.”)
228: Judge Maura Slattery Boyle was rated “not qualified” by the Council of Lawyers. The group says she can be insensitive to criminal defendants and “issues very harsh sentences” compared to other judges. We’re more concerned about her track record for having cases reversed on appeal. The council’s report cites two examples in which the Appellate Court found evidentiary errors so serious that it sent the cases back with instructions to assign them to a different judge. That undermines confidence in our criminal justice system.
232: Judge Matthew Coghlan also was rated “not qualified” by the Council of Lawyers, which cited a case in which the Appellate Court twice overturned his decision not to grant a rehearing for a defendant who said he’d confessed to murder after being tortured by detectives working for disgraced Chicago police Lt. Jon Burge. Remarkably, the Cook County Democratic Party — which routinely urges a “yes” vote on all Democratic judicial candidates, regardless of performance — is recommending a “no” vote on Coghlan. That’s based largely on his alleged role as a prosecutor in two wrongful convictions.
314: The Chicago Bar Association singled out Judge Lisa Ann Marino as not worthy of retention. Elected in 2012, she apparently got off to a very bad start. The group’s investigation raised “significant concerns about Judge Marino’s work ethic, punctuality, diligence and knowledge of the law.” Cook County voters should demand more from a $202,000-a-year employee.
Read the Tribune's endorsements for the 2018 general election »
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