Illinois court cases under scrutiny after investigation into police misconduct disclosures

... finds prosecutors in Illinois aren't disclosing when officers testifying for a case have a history of misconduct, and that's a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Yeah, the Invisible Institute found nearly 600 officers continue to be called to testify despite that lack of disclosure. Reporter Max Blaisdell and Sam Steklow are here to talk about their findings. First of all, thank you both so much for your time this morning. Thanks for having us. Max, I want to start with you. So nearly 600 officers, obviously that is an extraordinary number. How did you uncover this and what exactly isn't being disclosed? So we uncovered this by sending out public records requests to each of the more than 100 prosecuting offices. Across the state of Illinois, and that includes offices with hundreds of prosecutors like the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, and also small ones like Gallatin County that are made up of just a single prosecutor. And what we found is that there are hundreds, again, as you said, nearly 600 active duty The officers who are on these Brady lists, and we found that they were Testifying at least 1700 times. And while we're uncertain that disclosures were made in all those cases, we did find many examples of dozens of officers who did testify, Bye. but no disclosure was made. And again, as you said, that's a constitutional violation. Max, the Brady list, which was mentioned here, tracks Officers with histories of dishonesty, bias or misconduct, if that was in an unrelated case to which they're testifying for, how might that impact the case at hand? Yeah, it can impact the case in multiple ways. For example, if, say, a officer has a history of dishonesty or, say, of planting evidence on suspects, It's worth knowing, say, if you were being charged with a drug crime, say, that this officer has a history of lying because your defense attorney might want to use that at trial to impeach the officer's testimony and hopefully convince the jury that you are not guilty. But it can also come into play. In plea deals, in plea bargaining, say, if your defense attorney knows that this officer who the state is going to be forced to call to testify has this history of dishonesty or misconduct, it may help them bargain for a better deal for you. Sam, I want to bring you into the conversation. If prosecutors obviously have a constitutional obligation in this case to turn over some of this information, who's actually holding them accountable to make sure that is done? Yeah, thanks for that. So essentially, the answer is no one. Each individual prosecutor's office in the state of Illinois, and this is true across the country, operates the system basically according to their own rules. There are, as you said, U.S. Supreme Court cases that lay out very broad obligations on the part of prosecutors to turn over this kind of information about their witnesses, which can include also forensic experts and things like that. Um, but, uh, each prosecutor's office makes their own determination about whether or not they even keep officers, uh, whether or not, uh, you know, they disclose exactly kind of where in the process they disclose all the support really says that it needs to happen pre-trial. Um, but that, you know, sometimes is, is very, very close to trial. Right. And so it's, it's ultimately up to the prosecutors. Here it is. Discretion, and as Max said, there's over 100 different prosecutor's offices in Illinois. Each of those are individually elected by that county, and so it's ultimately just that elected prosecutor making decisions. As we report out later in our series, there are very, very few rules at the state level beyond what the Supreme Court has put forward. I want to introduce this Sonia Massey law to the conversation. And this was rolled out, as many might remember, a woman was fatally shot by a police officer in Sangamon County. And the law makes changes to the Illinois Police Training Act. And basically, this is regarding how law enforcement officers are hired. So departments will be privy to. Violations, the past violations before they hire these officers. Do you think as we move forward, we'll see less instances of misconduct and bias among officers as they kind of get weeded out and police departments take a closer look at their history when hiring? Sure. So I'm sure that the Sonia Massey Act will certainly prevent some officers from being hired in some positions. Ultimately, the Sonia Massey Act just requires that agencies obtain the previous records of officers. It doesn't actually say anything about whether or not. A previous instance of misconduct should result in an officer not being hired by that agency. And as we also report, there's a lot of lack of communication between the individual hiring agency and the prosecutor's office in many cases. Our main story that we reported out and that came out this week. It focuses on an officer in Gallatin County and their state's attorney only found out that they had an issue with previous dishonesty because of a citizen complaint that prompted this prosecutor to look further into the officer's background. It didn't come from the sheriff's office that you would presume they work closely with. And so there's still a lot of kind of gaps in the system that may certainly allow some officers to continue to pass through these. You know, last question. One thing that comes to mind is maybe you're a person behind bars based on the testimony of one of these officers who's been dishonest and you're sitting there, right? Waiting as your trial continues to play out. The question I guess I have is if you are a family member or you're the person behind bars, how can you find out if said officer has a past of misconduct and dishonesty? Is there anything you can do? Well, we published this first of its kind database that includes all of the officers in Illinois who've been flagged by prosecutors over the past roughly 10 years. And this database is publicly accessible and we'd encourage anyone who is interested in looking into their officer's past to look into this. Happy that you did it, happy that you did the work. Sam and Max, thank you.