HOW DID CYNTHIA BRIM GET ON THE BENCH…AND STAY THERE FOR NEARLY TWENTY YEARS?

2/5/13

Cook County Judge Cynthia Brim was found not guilty by reason of insanity of battery charges arising from an incident back in March, 2012 in which she shoved a sheriff’s deputy after tossing courtroom keys at the deputy and his cohorts working security at the Daley Center.  It was quite clear that the insanity defense would work.    On the day of the alleged battery, Judge Brim, meaning to go downtown to protest an online article criticizing a fellow judge, got off the bus at 47^th Street and apparently walked the six miles downtown and showed up at the Daley Center in hospital scrubs, a fur coat and hat.   This obviously aroused the suspicion of the Daley Center security detail, who had no idea she was a judge since she worked out of a courtroom in south suburban Markham and judges, even in Cook County, don’t normally come to work in scrubs and a fur coat.   Deputies who testified at the trial described her as “irrational” and “catatonic” that day, but, given the state of the judiciary in Cook County, one suspects that such traits did nothing to add to their suspicions that Judge Brim was not, indeed, a judge, but I digress.   At any rate, the Judge’s bizarre behavior led to the alleged battery and also to her ultimate conditional legal absolution.

The bigger question for Cook County residents and taxpayers (Judge Brim has been relived of her duties since the incident but continues to collect her $182,000 per year salary.  Hey, such stellar legal talent doesn’t come cheap, but, again, I digress.) is why Judge Brim was ever on the bench.  She has been hospitalized five times for psychotic episodes, once before and four times since her election to the bench in 1993.  At the time of her election, she was 35 years old, ten years out of law school, and had a resume bereft of private practice but featuring a series of jobs with Mayors Harold Washington and Richard M. Daley and Attorney General Roland Burris.   She was reelected in November, 2012, eight months after the alleged battery and while on the paid leave that resulted from that incident, with the support of the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization.

Judge Cynthia Brim appeared unqualified at the time of her original slating for, and perfunctory election to, the bench in 1993.   She did nothing while on the bench to dissuade anybody of that notion.   She has been a very sick person for her entire tenure as a judge.  And yet she has been on the bench for nearly twenty years.   But she was, and remains, a judge because, in Cook County, judges are elected, Chicago style.   Voters don’t pay attention to the judicial ballot; even yours truly, who follows politics more closely than does the average bear, doesn’t pay attention to the judicial ballot unless I know one of the candidates personally or through friends.   But instead of simply not voting for judges, like I do, on the theory that an uninformed vote is far worse than no vote at all, people randomly fill out their judicial ballots or simply vote for the candidate endorsed (slated) by the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization.

Given that few people vote for judge and many of those that do are politically motivated to do so, slating for the bench by the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization is tantamount to election.  That slating is, and has been for years, dominated by 14^th Ward Alderman and Committeeman Ed Burke.  Consequently, judicial candidates are not chosen based on their legal acumen or experience but, rather, based primarily on their political affiliations and loyalties, which, in most cases, must run toward the Organization, Mr. Burke, and the few other pols who have some hand in the process.

Is this any way to select a third branch of government?  

The obvious argument is for appointment, rather than election, of judges, as is done in most other jurisdictions in this country.   This course of action is also fraught with peril, given that, like everything else in and around Chicago, that selection process would be dripping with politics.  But the current system of electing, and slating, judges is tantamount to appointment with the mere façade of an election, so how much worse could actual appointment be?

Even though it is not known as one of the nation’s stellar systems, it’s a miracle that the Cook County court system works as well as it does.   But we can’t count on miracles forever.  It would seem that the system of slating, for certain election, political hacks, lackeys, toadies, and hangers-on, along with a few random and largely coincidental fine legal minds, has to come to an end.   Or would the alternative be just as scary?

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on this subject.