Judge v Judge

So is this a good thing?

• A Cook County judge has undone one of the most confounding pretrial detention decisions we’ve reported, ordering a man accused of killing a pedestrian while driving drunk in Lakeview jailed after another judge released him on electronic monitoring.

  The reversal of fortune for 34-year-old Miroslaw Ciszek came after prosecutors asked the court to reconsider his release—a rare move in Cook County, as CWB Chicago reported in an exclusive story earlier this year.

  [...] While weighing whether he would release Ciszek on August 11, Judge D’Anthony Thedford asked whether Milcarek had been in a crosswalk or was “in a crosswalk or … essentially jaywalking.” Prosecutors said they did not know. Thedford ultimately rejected prosecutors’ request for detention and released Ciszek on electronic monitoring and ordered Ciszek to avoid “excessive or public consumption of alcohol.”

  During a routine hearing on September 2, Judge Ankur Srivastava closed a gap in Thedford’s order by requiring Ciszek to surrender his passport, a precaution commonly imposed when defendants with foreign citizenship are released while facing serious charges. Thedford’s original release order did not include that requirement.

So Thedford f#$%ed up not pulling this guy's passport - almost like he wanted him to disappear prior to trial. And then...:

• Judge Lorraine Murphy ultimately sided with prosecutors and ordered Ciszek jailed pending trial. She specifically cited allegations that Ciszek “fled with [the victim] hanging out of his car” and “crashed 2 more times and fled the scene.” Murphy also noted that his blood alcohol concentration was allegedly still .088 nearly seven hours after the crash.

  The reversal comes as Thedford’s record on detention requests continues to strongly favor defendants at a level that greatly exceeds his peers. CWB Chicago reported in May that Thedford had approved just 42% of detention petitions involving non-domestic felony cases since taking his seat on March 17. At the time, the approval rate across the courthouse’s Pretrial Division was about 69%.

Thedford doesn't seem to have appeared on the most recent ballot, not that it would have mattered since Cook county voters are pretty much conditioned to accept the status quo.