August 6th, 2008
In today’s Register Star, we told you about how law enforcement organizations and victims’ advocates are paying more attention to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board after some lawmakers in May tried to oust one of the board’s more conservative members.
In June, the coalition sent a letter scolding lawmakers for playing politics with the board. That letter is here.
“Convicted murderers and cop-killers, the unbelievably damaged families left behind, public safety, and the integrity of the criminal justice system are not political footballs to be played with in this manner,” they wrote.
One lawmaker, Sen. Dale Righter, R-Mattoon, took the time to offer a detailed response. He makes a number of valid points, but his letter also reeks of brazen, election-year partisanship. His letter is here.
Effectively, Righter tells the victims’ advocates they ought to back Republicans to reverse what he labels as the Democrats’ push toward an “anti-law enforcement agenda.” As he put it, “There is no doubt that if (Senate President Emil Jones Jr., D-Chicago) and his leadership team felt their power could be threatened by the continued pursuit of an anti-law enforcement agenda with regards to the PRB, this agenda would come to an abrupt halt.”
In other words, Righter appeared to say, they should elect more Republicans. For as long as Democrats control the Senate and for as long as Jones wishes to continue serving in that role, Jones will be Senate president. His power isn’t “threatened” unless Republicans manage to win a majority — or, at the least, a few more seats than they have.
Democrats control the Senate, just as they control the House and the governor’s office. They rule the roost, and Republicans have little power to stop them.
But Righter’s flat refusal to accept any responsibility for the perceived ”anti-law enforcement agenda” — even as he admonishes the victims’ advocates to more directly name Senate leaders in their own letter, and as he implicitly encourages them to back Republicans – is nonetheless striking.
Go read the whole thing for yourself. It’s a gem.
Terry Rudeen, whose husband was killed by a bank robber while working as a Winnebago County sheriff’s deputy in 1974, gracefully responded to Righter with an e-mail. A copy is available here.
June 20th, 2008
As I covered the Prisoner Review Board’s consideration of Ted Bacino’s request for parole in recent weeks, one question that prosecutors and others repeatedly wondered aloud to me was: Why are so many parole board members determined to release a cop killer?
Bacino’s request for parole was denied on Thursday when just four of the board’s members voted to free him. But in past years, as many as six of the board’s members have voted for his release. He needs just seven votes for freedom.
The board’s chairman, Jorge Montes, has consistently promoted Bacino’s parole. On Thursday, Montes argued it was only a matter of time until the board finally releases him.
“Mr. Bacino is in very poor health. He’s been in poor health, maybe a little worse last year than this year. He’s had great support from this board — up to six votes last year and the year before. He’s going to be released whether we like it or not within the next eight years, probably, if he’s still alive,” Montes said.
“He’s had support from very notable figures in the community, including Justice (Prentice) Marshall (who) before he passed away was one of the most important jurists on the federal bench in Chicago, the Northern District. So (he’s) a very influential and important man who put his reputation on the line to support Mr. Bacino. He’s elderly. He has excellent support from his family. His wife has still been waiting for him. He’s got good support at home. And he’s very involved with his church group, with his pastor, etc. So I’m going to be voting (yes for parole).”
June 17th, 2008
I recently told you about a major political fight over the re-appointment of former Chicago cop Salvador Diaz to the Prisoner Review Board, just as the board prepares to vote on whether to parole local cop killer Ted Bacino.
The State Journal-Register has much, much more today:
A collection of law enforcement and victims’ rights groups is decrying what they view as an effort to make the Illinois Prisoner Review Board more lenient.
In a letter sent to state senators and Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the organizations say the “recent debacle” over reappointing a former Chicago police officer to the 15-member board shows that the process is becoming politicized.
“The incident was an absolutely unacceptable act of political manipulation and patronage that endangers the Illinois public and the political reputations of those pressured into supporting such an effort,” says the letter signed by 12 groups. “We ask your most sincere efforts to prevent patronage and political deal making from being used when it comes to the Prisoner Review Board.”
Sen. Rickey Hendon, a Chicago Democrat who led the fight to oust Diaz repeated his stock explanation that Diaz violated protocol by failing to ask Hendon for his blessing. He said his determination to remove Diaz from the parole board was not part of an effort on his part to steer the board leftward.
Hendon gave a similar explanation in 2005 when he worked to reject the nomination of consumer advocate Marty Cohen to the Illinois Commerce Commission, which regulates utilities. Hendon said Gov. Rod Blagojevich violated protocol by by not seeking his blessing for the Cohen appointment.
“Marty Cohen is not the only talent in this town,” bellowed Sen. Rickey Hendon, a Chicago Democrat who chairs a committee that, earlier Thursday, voted 7-0 against the nomination.
Hendon said his opposition was meant as a message to Blagojevich, a fellow Democrat who failed to consult with him before advancing Cohen’s name.
“Rod Blagojevich,” Hendon shouted on the Senate floor, “get your act together!”
Senate President Emil Jones Jr., a Chicago Democrat who teamed with Hendon to reject Cohen, said their effort had nothing to do with trying to protect ComEd by preventing one of the utility’s adversaries from joining the ICC — one of the greatest donors to Jones’ campaign fund.
Utilities contributed more than $1.3 million to the campaign funds of Illinois policymakers and candidates since the beginning of 2003, according to a report published in October by the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, a nonpartisan government watchdog.
The report said Senate President Emil Jones Jr., D-Chicago, took $219,400 of that money, making him the top recipient. It said ComEd parent company Exelon, together with its subsidiaries, lead the donors with $535,400 in contributions.
“No contributions that I receive impact the decisions that I make here,” Jones said after the Senate panel rejected Cohen.
More background on the Cohen fight is here and here.
After the Senate rejected Cohen, Blagojevich appointed former Rockford Mayor Charles Box to head the ICC, and the Senate confirmed him. Box promptly voted to rubber-stamp ComEd’s plan to procure power through reverse auctions — a plan that consumer advocates opposed. (The Legislature later abolished reverse auctions.)
Anyway, back the parole board.
Republicans, like prosecutors, believe Hendon and Jones are in fact trying to make the parole board more sensitive to the calls of prisoners seeking freedom.
“There’s no doubt the Senate Democrats want to remove law enforcement personnel (from the board),” said Sen. Kirk Dillard, R-Hinsdale. “They’re seen as too strict when it comes to parole.”
“I’ve heard that they are trying to remove all of the law enforcement people from the Prisoner Review Board,” said Sen. John Millner, R-Carol Stream. “From behind the scenes and people talking in back rooms, there’s (supposedly) not enough prisoners being released.”
Millner said he thought it inappropriate to oust the last former law enforcer from the board. At one time, there were three: Diaz, former Tazewell County Sheriff James Donahue and ex-Peoria Police Chief John Stenson.
Blagojevich didn’t reappoint Donahue, and Stenson’s reappointment was rejected by the Senate in 2007.
The Prisoner Review Board is expected to vote Thursday on Bacino’s request for parole.
May 31st, 2008
In my Saturday column, I looked at how prosecutors are concerned about what they view as an effort by powerful Democrats to make the state’s parole board more liberal.
The fate of local cop-killer Theodore Bacino met brass-knuckles Illinois politics this week, leaving Capitol insiders wondering why powerful Democrats want to remove a tough-on-crime former cop from the state’s parole board.
It’s not entirely clear why Sen. Rickey Hendon, a top lieutenant of Senate President Emil Jones Jr., led the fight Thursday to block Salvador Diaz from another term on the Prisoner Review Board.
What is clear is that Hendon reignited concern among prosecutors that he and fellow Democrats are attempting to push the board to the left by removing members viewed as unsympathetic to the pleas of prisoners seeking freedom.
On June 19, the board is expected to vote on Bacino’s latest request for parole.
I also reported on this stunning claim:
The prosecutors who challenged Hendon — and by extension, Senate President Jones, a fellow Chicago Democrat — reportedly paid dearly.
After the vote, Jones ordered $3 million removed from the state budget for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, according to John Gorman, a spokesman for that office.
This money is intended to help Cook County prosecutors cover the cost of videotaping interrogations in murder investigations, Gorman said. He said the cut appeared to be in retaliation for his office’s lobbying effort to keep Diaz on the board. […]
Jones spokeswoman Cindy Davidsmeyer disputed Gorman’s account.
“The budget that passed the Senate a week ago did not include that money,” she said Friday. “Secondly, the budget is not even final yet. It’s still being negotiated.”
Davidsmeyer also made this comment, which did not appear in the column: “In the previous year and years before, we have sent the funding over to the House and it’s been cut over there. So this year when we sent our budget over last week, we did not include it. That’s the history.”
For more background on the effort to oust Diaz, just weeks before the parole board’s Bacino vote, go here. (This story is slightly dated. The Register Star supposedly ran an updated version of this news story today, but I can’t find it on the Web site.)
Now, let’s look at some of the politics I couldn’t squeeze into today’s column.
Salvador Diaz is a former Chicago police officer allied with U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a prominent Chicago Democrat. Gutierrez, in turn, is a close ally of Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Blagojevich, of course, has long been in lockstep with Senate President Emil Jones Jr. And Jones, in turn, is Hendon’s boss in the Senate.
So, why were Hendon and Jones working to oust a Gutierrez ally whom Blagojevich nominated for another term on the parole board? As I indicated in my column, it’s not entirely clear. However, Capitol insiders posed lots of questions and I did my best to get some answers.
Let’s begin with the Senate’s four Latinos — the “Latino Caucus,” as they call themselves. They are Sens. Willie Delgado, Tony Munoz and Iris Martinez of Chicago, and Marty Sandoval of Cicero.
On Thursday, Delgado and Martinez voted to keep Diaz on the parole board, while Munoz and Sandoval voted to reject him.
I asked Delgado whether a division within the Latino Caucus informed the vote on Diaz.
“Once upon a time when the Latino Caucus was created and Rod Blagojevich gets elected, he felt that the only one he had to be accountable to in the Latino community was his good friend and congressman Luis Gutierrez,” Delgado said. “So therefore, anything that we submitted that we thought were good recommendations for government, he ignored. He took Luis Gutierrez’s recommendations, and Sal Diaz was one of them.
“I’ve known Sal 20 years. He’s a personal friend of mine and a former police officer. So then of course he works all those year uninterrupted by me or anyone else. I want justice. I back issues, not individuals. But in retrospect over the years, keeping in mind there’s two other vacancies (on the Prisoner Review Board), (Senate) leadership had knowledge, or I guess Emil or someone else had knowledge, that this guy was pretty biased as an officer on this PRB.”
Delgado added, “There are some politics in there, but I don’t play that here. Quite the contrary. I’m a policy builder.”
Delgado also said he would like to fill one of the parole board’s two vacancies with former Sen. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, another Latino and liberal Democrat from Chicago.
But while Martinez supported Diaz on Thurday, she subsequently filed a motion for the Senate to reconsider the vote. She therefore attempted to enable the Senate to vote again — and to possibly reject Diaz. On Friday, she said she withdrew her motion to reconsider the vote, though she refused to label her retreat as a surrender to pro-Diaz forces.
“They voted me ‘yes,’” Martinez said, though it’s not clear who “they” was. “I voted opposite of Hendon, but that was because that was a mistake because I intended … my intent was to vote ‘no.’”
Martinez is a member of Jones’ leadership team and therefore is under pressure to do his bidding. I suspect her vote for Diaz — a vote against Hendon and, by extension, Jones — didn’t go over so well.
She echoed Hendon’s postion that Diaz should have been rejected because he violated Senate protocol when he failed to personally ask Hendon for his blessing. “It’s about the procedure,” she said.
Munoz told me he was not in the Senate at the time of the vote, and that somebody else voted for him. Had he been in the chamber, he told me, he would have supported Diaz. Munoz is a Chicago police officer; Diaz is a former Chicago cop.
Sandoval told me he too would vote “differently” if he had another chance.
Even as I explored any connection between the anti-Diaz push and the parole board’s upcoming vote on Bacino, I learned of another case pending before the board that arguably is closer to the Senate’s beating heart.
Like Bacino, Joseph Bigsby is a cop-killer. Bigsby murdered a Chicago police officer in 1973. His public defenders at the time were John Cullerton, now a state senator, and Larry Suffredin, now a Cook County board commissioner and Statehouse lobbyist.
To this day, Cullerton and Suffredin closely follow Bigsby’s case. They show up at his parole hearings to express their support for his plea for freedom. They argue the time Bigsby has already served in prison is greater than sentences served by other individuals who committed similar crimes.
On May 15, the Prisoner Review Board voted 8-5 to keep Bigsby in prison. Diaz was among the eight members voting to reject Bigsby’s request for parole.
On Thursday, Cullerton voted to reject Diaz. I asked him whether the push to oust Diaz was motivated by his desire to see Bigsby free.
“It’s not,” Cullerton said. “Absolutely not. I made that very clear. Absolutely not. I think that would be improper. I care about Bigsby, but from what I understand, (Diaz) is a decent guy and he’s voting his conscience.”
Cullerton added, “I perceive this as being a political issue — not for any of his votes but rather, you know, the political supporter. It could be a number of things. Maybe Gutierrez didn’t properly communicate his concern. Maybe he didn’t call the (Senate) president. Politics, you know. I don’t think it has anything to do with the guy’s qualifications.”
UPDATE 1
Jorge Montes, the Prisoner Review Board’s chairman, told me Diaz is not the board’s most conservative member.
“We deem him to be an extremely moderate, conservative board member. As far as I’m concerned, he has been nothing but fair and balanced, not to sound like Fox news — ‘fair and balanced.’ He is a former law enforcement officer who certainly brings his own perspective to the board and is valuable to the board. The board has historically been an extremely conservative board and it continues to be an extremely conservative board. And Mr. Diaz represents probably a very moderate force on the board. If anything, he would be a moderate force.”
Montes added, “Historically, as far back as I can remember, and I’ve been on the board almost 15 years, politics has never, believe it or not, has never played a role in our deliberations. And we’ve never made any effort to engineer any political shift. All I can say at this juncture is I am delighted that we will get the opportunity to continue to work with Sal Diaz, who was reappointed by Gov. Blagojevich, and that we have nothing but excellent things to say about Mr. Diaz and his performance on the board. He is an extremely fair individual. And all these conjectures about any connection to a particular case are very strange.”
State law does not require the board to include a police officer as a member.
The Board shall consist of 15 persons appointed by the Governor by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. One member of the Board shall be designated by the Governor to be Chairman and shall serve as Chairman at the pleasure of the Governor. The members of the Board shall have had at least 5 years of actual experience in the fields of penology, corrections work, law enforcement, sociology, law, education, social work, medicine, psychology, other behavioral sciences, or a combination thereof. At least 6 members so appointed must have had at least 3 years experience in the field of juvenile matters. No more than 8 Board members may be members of the same political party.
However, Montes said having a police officer on board is valuable.
“There’s no question that having a former police officer on the board adds a lot of important intelligence, or ability to understand intelligence, for the board,” he said. “There’s no question they make an important contribution to the board.”
