Stories by W.J. Kennedy on Cook County Record

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker recently boasted that officials in heavily Democratic Illinois will attempt to shield illegal immigrants from potential deportation actions under the incoming Trump administration. An advocate for victims of illegal immigrant crime says state actions could place the state and local authorities on a legal collision course with the feds

Attorneys for Chicago Police officers accused of misconduct are pushing back against attempts by lawyers representing Jose Cruz, who was exonerated while serving a 90-year sentence over the murder of Antwane Douglas, to secure a trove of depositions from other cases that the city's lawyers say would be used to file more lawsuits

Most exonerations are based not on new evidence indicating innocence, but on extraordinary claims that police tortured suspects, fabricated evidence and colluded with prosecutors to win guilty verdicts.

A public interest law firm is suing Illinois law enforcement officials for monitoring the movements of Illinoisans with automatic license plate readers (ALPRs).

The appellate court erred in 2019 when it affirmed Cook County Judge William Hooks' decision that led to a new trial—a third one— for convicted cop killer Jackie Wilson, the Illinois Supreme Court has ruled.

North Cook News filed suit in late September after ETHS reportedly claimed in a response to two FOIA requests it had no emails among school officials discussing four math courses in which enrollment was limited to Latino or Black students

It is estimated the city of Chicago has paid more than $130 million to settle claims brought in cases that critics say have been driven by political pressure generated from campaigns by trial lawyers to sympathetic media, and not by new evidence.

Catherine Brown, a 2019 candidate for Chicago mayor, has been charged by the Attorney General’s office with allegedly defrauding the CHA of $136,000 over 10 years. Brown was the recipient of a controversial $800,000 settlement from the city for alleged police brutality stemming from an incident in which police said she dragged an officer under her car

The search for the real killer of teenagers Jerry Hillard and girlfriend Marilyn Green is at the heart of an upcoming defamation case that a legal scholar says carries “national importance.”

CHICAGO (Legal Newsline) - An Illinois appeals court agreed with a lower court that an insurance company is not responsible for additional interest on a 2015 payout to a former Chicago-area attorney injured in a cab accident.

The scariest thing about the book, Conviction at Any Cost, which reads like a top crime novel, is that it’s not a work of fiction.