Chicago City Wire

Kim Foxx’s second in command, Risa Lanier, is running for judge in the 19th Subcircuit, despite being saddled with negative recommendations from area bar associations, and heavy baggage from her time under Foxx.

Three members of the 13-member Alliance of Bar Associations for Judicial Screening, the Decalogue Society of Lawyers, the LGBTQ+ Bar Association, and the Women’s Bar Association gave Lanier “Not Recommended” evaluations. A fourth, the Illinois State Bar Association, gave her a “Not Qualified” recommendation.

"Attorneys contacted during the investigation process had wide-ranging views," the State Bar Association evaluation said in part, "with some referring to her as excellent while others opined that she lacked judgement and displayed poor decision-making skills. Some also expressed concerns over what they termed her honesty and candidness with the Court, while others had no such concerns. ISBA finds Ms. Risa Renee Lanier not qualified to be elected to the Circuit Court of Cook County."

Two other candidates for the district, Dave Heilmann and Bridget Colleen Duignan, receive no “not recommended” or “not qualified” evaluations from the Alliance.

Lanier was the lead investigator in the Jussie Smollett fiasco, where charges were dismissed against the actor for staging a hate crime in January 2019.  In 2020, Special Prosecutor Dan Webb released a report that found “substantial abuses of discretion and operational failures” in the state’s attorney’s handling of the initial prosecution.

After the report was published, Smollett was again indicted again by a Cook County grand jury. On December 9, 2021, he was found guilty on five of the six counts.

The 19th Subcircuit covers Oak Lawn and Palos Hills and the South Side Chicago neighborhoods Mount Greenwood and Beverly, home to many police officers and firefighters.

The Lanier candidacy is unlikely to sit well with the police.

Martin Preib, former spokesman for the Chicago FOP, blasted Lanier in a recent “Crooked City” blog post.

“She has been under fire by fellow long-serving prosecutors in the Foxx regime, many of whom have left the office in disgust at what it has become,” Preib wrote.

He continued: “In the wake of several dubious news articles attacking attorneys under Lanier for their role in the prosecution of three Spanish Cobras for murdering off-duty police officer Clifton Lewis in 2011, Lanier took the two attorneys off the case, a move that only added fuel to the fire against both attorneys. In one legal obscenity, two of the Spanish Cobras charged with the murder have had their charges completely dropped while Lanier was a top prosecutor in the administration.”

It was Lanier who made the final decision not to challenge the awarding of Certificates of Innocence (COIs) last November to Gabriel Solache and Arturo DeLeon-Reyes, the two convicted of the 1998 Bucktown murders of a husband and wife, and the kidnapping of their children. This, while the office had earlier opposed the COIs for the two.

In a civil lawsuit filed by Solache and Deleon-Reyes, Foxx’s office said it was willing to admit in a court declaration that its reversal on the COIs “did not reflect a final determination that either Petitioner Solache or Petitioner Reyes was innocent.”

Foxx’s offered the declaration in lieu of having Lanier deposed. Attorneys representing the defendants in the case balked. They said that the declaration offered by the CCSAO did not get to the bottom of why the office reversed itself.

The primary election is Tuesday, March 19.