Chicago City Wire

Although it is legal, money from political donors should not be considered by a judge or an elected official when making court decisions in cases in which contributors are attorneys, according to Pat O’Brien, a former judge and Republican candidate running for Cook County state’s attorney.

But that’s exactly what O'Brien accuses incumbent Kim Foxx of doing.

“You can make donations to elected officials but then the question is whether it, in some way, affects the decision-making of those officials,” O’Brien told the Chicago City Wire. “It shouldn't.”

O’Brien, who served as Cook County circuit court judge for eight years, said he began to suspect foul play when Foxx resisted allowing her assistant state's attorneys to testify in the cases of three men suing the city of Chicago, Chicago police officers and former assistant state’s attorneys, after being allegedly wrongfully convicted and imprisoned.

“Specifically, Foxx argued that her former assistants should not have to explain the reasoning behind the CCSAO’s decision to vacate,” O’Brien said. “If in, fact, there is no influence, why would you prevent your individual assistants who were part of that decision-making from testifying to that in a discovery situation in the civil court?”

When defendants-turned-plaintiffs Derrell Fulton, Nevest Coleman and Arthur Brown, each convicted of murder, filed motions to vacate their convictions, Foxx allegedly objected at first but then agreed to drop all charges without objecting to certificates of innocence for each man, according to O’Brien.

“We have a state's attorney who essentially has won a campaign then touts the fact that a lot of convictions were based upon inappropriate testimony or information and she is going to essentially be the state's attorney who gets all these wrongfully convicted persons out of jail,” O’Brien said in an interview. “Because they were wrongfully convicted, she's going to then not have a problem with the city of Chicago giving them millions of dollars in a settlement or after a jury verdict.”

Foxx’s office stated in an email that the state's attorney could not comment on pending litigation.

“There's always the ability after a trial to file a post-conviction petition and that's what the attorneys for the then inmates would have done,” O’Brien alleged. “Then the state's attorney represents the people of the state of Illinois by either opposing or not opposing. At some point, her office decided they wouldn’t oppose Certificates of Innocence.”

O’Brien further discloses that, according to the Illinois State Board of Elections, attorneys representing Fulton, Coleman and Brown made contributions to Foxx’s coffers.

Those contributions include $7,900 from Kathleen Zellner, $21,500 from Jonathan and Arthur Lovey and $4,250 from the firm of Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila.

A judge in at least one of the three lawsuits over allegations of wrongful imprisonment is interested in hearing from Foxx’s assistant attorneys.

O’Brien said Judge Rebecca Palmeyer is allowing former assistant state's attorney Eric Sussman to be deposed Nov. 14.