Clerk Iris Martinez says most defendants are ditching court — but critics don't trust her numbers

Ahead of the first anniversary of the end of cash bail in Illinois, Cook County’s clerk of court released a statistic that mystified other stakeholders in the county justice system: She warned that three out of four unconfined defendants have failed to show up for court dates over the past year.

In a letter to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Clerk Iris Martinez wrote, “Together, we need to ensure that victims, witnesses, lawyers, judges, and police officers are not attending tens of thousands of hearings without the defendants being present.”

Martinez said defendants have failed to appear in court for hearings in roughly 67,000 of 90,000 cases from last September — when cash bail was eliminated in Illinois — until early this month. She called for an independent analysis of what she described as a "disconcerting" trend.

But in response to questions on Wednesday, Martinez declined to discuss her office's methodology or explain how they reached some of the figures cited in the letter. For example, the total number of cases during the period Martinez cited was 30,000 higher than those released by the Chief Judge Timothy Evans' office.

A spokesperson for the clerk's office acknowledged its analysis included all active warrants in Cook County in their calculations, including warrants filed years before cash bail was abolished.

The spokesperson declined to answer follow-up questions on Wednesday, but said, "It is disheartening that an effort to be transparent is being politicized."

Martinez' letter, dated Tuesday, was also sent to Evans and other top county officials, including Sheriff Tom Dart, Public Defender Sharone Mitchell Jr., State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and the county’s board of commissioners.

Stakeholders in the justice system, who’ve lauded last year’s sweeping court reform, privately wondered if the timing of Martinez's letter was a form of political payback. In March, Martinez lost a re-election bid to Mariyana Spyropoulos, who won the primary with the endorsement of the Cook County Democratic party, led by Preckwinkle.

Researchers, judges, prosecutors, public defenders and domestic violence advocates were baffled and said Martinez’s findings did not line up with what they're seeing every day in court.

On Wednesday, Evans wrote back to Martinez, saying he was disappointed she didn't address her concerns to him and other county justice system officials before sending her letter.

Under the state reforms enacted a year ago, judges no longer set cash bail but prosecutors may seek detention for defendants until trial. Cook County prosecutors have sought detention in about a quarter of felony cases over the past year, and judges approved about three-fifths of those requests, according to Evans’ office.

Martinez’s analysis involves defendants who weren’t ordered detained. Her office counted arrest warrants that judges issue when people don’t show up in court. But the analysis also included “notices to appear,” postcards that, under last year's reform, judges send to people when they miss a court date.

Evans questioned the data and methodology Martinez used in her analysis — and he said his own records show far fewer instances of people missing court dates.

"Our data show that fewer than 28,000 cases had any evidence of a non-appearance in this time period, including those cured by a subsequent appearance," Evans wrote.

Evans's office maintains a weekly computer dashboard that tracks the fallout from the reforms, and it says that 88% of people who’ve been released pending trial in Cook County have come to their court hearings since the no-bail reform took effect last year — the opposite of Martinez's findings.

Evans also addressed Martinez's suggestion that an "independent entity" conduct an analysis of defendants’ failures to appear in court.

He noted that researchers at Loyola University Chicago, using a U.S. Justice Department grant, are about to release an annual study of the impact of the reform in Cook County and that "an initial analysis validates the findings in my office's weekly dashboards."