Latest News - Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts

You Have the Right to Chronically-Underfunded and Overworked Counsel: The need for improved support of public defense in Cook County and beyond.

BACKGROUND The concept of a public defender is relatively modern in the American legal system. For most of U.S. history, being poor meant defense by an attorney was unavailable to you. That all changed, however, in the seminal case, Gideon v. Wainwright, when the Supreme Court found it to be the...

Checking on the Cook County Criminal Court’s Case Backlog

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts has been tracking the status of Illinois Courts’ shutdown. With COVID-19 causing the courts to shut down and the Illinois Supreme Court to pause speedy trial rights, case processing slowed to a crawl. In April...

Which states protect your right to communicate after arrest?

The Governor signed the Safety Accountability Fairness and Equity - Today (SAFE-T) Act in February of 2021. Among the many police and criminal legal system provisions in the law, the SAFE-T Act (IL PA 101-0652) solidifies the right to communicate for all people arrested in Illinois. In this...

Funding for public defense in Cook County — a legal and racial justice issue.

In June, the Sixth Amendment Center published a report, “The Right to Counsel in Illinois: Evaluation of Adult Criminal Trial-Level Indigent Defense Services,” which shines new light on Illinois’ indigent defense system—and its inability to live up to constitutional standards. Commissioned by the...

Is police accountability in Illinois over before it began? Our review of HB 3443 found it weakens the SAFE-T Act significantly.

Introduction Early in June, the Illinois General Assembly passed HB 3443, a trailer bill to the SAFE-T Act (IL PA 101-0652) that was signed by Governor Pritzker in February. The SAFE-T Act included the Pretrial Fairness Act, ending cash bail and making other criminal justice and police reforms. T...