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The problem in America that is Relational in its justice system..http://itwasjohnson.impiousdigest.com/modus1.htm

Why Crooked Prosecutors and Judges are Promoted in the Masonic Judicial System

It's simple. A crooked judge is more likely not just to overlook the crimes of a fellow mason, but also more likely to use his authority to railroad an innocent defendant under the orders of a higher-ranking mason. Usually, it is done as a test of loyalty, in exchange for advancement, or some other reward.

From The Chicago Tribune, January 14, 1999

Break rules, be promoted

When former prosecutors were criticized by appeals courts for breaking the rules of a fair trial, their careers weren't sidetracked. Instead they became judges.

By Ken Armstrong and Maurice Possley

Tribune Staff Writers

January 14, 1999

As Cook County prosecutors, Carol Pearce McCarthy, Kenneth Wadas and Patrick Quinn drew scathing rebukes from the Illinois Appellate Court for failing to abide by the rules designed to keep prosecutors honest and trials fair.

"Inexcusable," is how the court described McCarthy's misconduct in one case. The state's lawyer disciplinary agency agreed. It took the exceptional step of reprimanding her -- but in a way that kept her identity a secret.

"An insult to the court and to the dignity of the trial bar," is what the court called Wadas' trial tactics. Twice, reviewing courts suggested professional disciplinary action might be in order to punish his conduct.

As for Quinn, the court wrote "we can hardly imagine a more obfuscating attempt" to characterize his misleading statements to a jury. Quinn prosecuted a sheriff's deputy for official misconduct -- and committed misconduct himself by allowing two witnesses to provide what he knew was misleading testimony, the appellate court ruled.

Collectively, the three prosecutors broke enough rules that nine defendants -- four convicted of murder -- were granted new trials on appeal, according to court records.

But instead of having their career prospects suffer, all three prosecutors prospered. They were promoted to supervisor in the Cook County state's attorney's office. Then, on the same fall day in 1996, all three were elected judges.

Wadas and McCarthy became Cook County Circuit Court judges and are now responsible for enforcing the very rules they sometimes violated. Quinn joined the Illinois Appellate Court -- the court that reviews trial court proceedings.

Their path is well traveled. A Tribune analysis of appellate rulings spanning the past two decades turned up 39 other Cook County prosecutors who also became judges after cases they prosecuted were reversed because of misconduct.

That group includes former prosecutors denounced for what the courts have deemed some of the worst kinds of misconduct: failing to disclose evidence favorable to a defendant, allowing witnesses to lie or discriminating against African-Americans during jury selection.

More often, the misconduct consisted of arguments or cross-examinations that violated a defendant's constitutional rights. In many instances, those prosecutors who became judges had only one reversal.

Other Cook County prosecutors engaging in misconduct have gone on to high-ranking positions in the Illinois attorney general's office or in city government. Alexander Vroustouris landed his post as Chicago's inspector general one month before the courts threw out a murder conviction, ruling Vroustouris defied a judge's order by making an improper argument the judge had specifically declared off limits.

Those judges and high-ranking state and municipal officials underscore a fundamental reason why misconduct by prosecutors persists. In an environment where prosecutors recite conviction rates like boxers touting won-loss records, the risks are negligible for those who break the rules of a fair trial.

Winning a conviction can accelerate a prosecutor's career, but getting rebuked on appeal will rarely stall it, contributing to a culture that fosters misconduct. And the deterrents that confront prosecutors are fearsome only in theory.

Here is what usually happens when a prosecutor cheats:

Appellate courts uphold the conviction, admonishing the prosecutor not to do it again. When a court does overturn the conviction, it shields the prosecutor from embarrassment, omitting his or her name from the opinion or releasing its ruling in a way that few eyes ever see it.

In their rulings, appellate justices sometimes urge lawyer disciplinary officials to punish prosecutors, but such prompting is hollow. Courts have referred numerous prosecutors to the Illinois agency that polices lawyers only to see investigative files get opened and closed with no punishment levied, the Tribune found.

There is little threat of financial penalties from a civil lawsuit because courts have granted prosecutors immunity. Courts, though, have carved out narrow exceptions, and some defendants have won settlements.

And only rarely are criminal charges filed. Few prosecutors nationally have been indicted, and they were acquitted or, at worst, convicted of a misdemeanor and fined. Three former DuPage County prosecutors face trial next week on charges of framing former Death Row inmate Rolando Cruz.

Shelter of anonymity

When Carol Pearce McCarthy ran for Cook County judge in 1996, she won the crucial endorsement of the local Democratic Party. For that, she could thank Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who was once her boss as Cook County state's attorney.

Daley sang McCarthy's praises to his brother John, a Cook County commissioner and a member of the Democratic panel that slates judicial hopefuls, John Daley recalled in an interview. McCarthy's former colleagues also lauded her, and John Daley passed on those acclamations to the selection committee, calling McCarthy an "outstanding" candidate.

John Daley didn't know that appellate justices had previously expressed a dramatically different opinion of McCarthy's work. Nor did he know that she was one of only two prosecutors sanctioned for trial misconduct by the state's lawyer disciplinary agency, going back to its creation in 1973.

And it would have been difficult for him to make those discoveries. Disciplinary and court records concerning McCarthy's conduct are layered in secrecy or buried in obscure files. Ask disciplinary officials if McCarthy has ever been sanctioned, and their rules prevent them from mentioning the reprimand that she received.

In 1982, McCarthy prosecuted Willie Ray Jr. on a charge of murdering a man during a robbery at a takeout restaurant. An eyewitness identified Ray as the killer, and two other prosecution witnesses provided powerful corroborating evidence.

The prosecution's case appeared to be stitched tight, but in the trial's closing act, McCarthy put on a display that would later unravel the work of police, fellow prosecutors, jurors and court personnel.

In her final argument, McCarthy resorted to sly hints, unfounded accusations and misstatements of fact and law, a court later determined. She impugned the defense attorney's integrity and invited jurors to engage in improper speculation, intimating that she possessed additional incriminating evidence.

"I wish I could give you my file . . . but I'm not allowed to because that is the law," McCarthy told jurors.

The jury found Ray guilty, but the verdict was overturned in 1984 by the Illinois Appellate Court, which listed more than a half dozen ways that McCarthy committed misconduct.

"The prosecutor's actions in this case read like a veritable hornbook of 'do nots,' " the court wrote. ". . . The State's interest in a criminal prosecution is not that it must win at all costs, but to assure that justice is done . . ."

Ray had to be tried again -- and again he was convicted.

Although the appellate court was obviously upset with McCarthy, the court extended a standard courtesy that sheltered her from embarrassment. Instead of mentioning her by name in its opinion, the court referred to McCarthy only as "the prosecutor."

The Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission -- the Illinois Supreme Court agency charged with policing lawyers -- followed up the appellate court's ruling with its own investigation. In 1986, after McCarthy had already left the state's attorney's office, the commission issued her a reprimand, its weakest sanction.

At the time, reprimands were issued confidentially. But the Tribune was able to determine McCarthy's identity because the agency later issued a compendium of its private disciplinary orders. Although all the names were removed, the Tribune matched language from the reprimand order with the appellate ruling in the Ray case, and an examination of the trial transcript identified McCarthy.

McCarthy declined requests for an interview. When she appeared before the disciplinary commission, she testified that she had insufficient time to prepare her argument. She told the commission she believed the defense attorney's argument had been unfair and she felt compelled to respond.

In its reprimand order, the agency expressed wonder at the fact that McCarthy had received no internal discipline within the state's attorney's office.

The Ray case was not the first time the appellate court had criticized McCarthy for misconduct. A year before Ray's conviction was reversed, the court threw out the armed robbery convictions of two men because McCarthy and her trial partner violated the trial judge's order forbidding them from using certain inadmissible evidence.

In her final argument, McCarthy disclosed the evidence to jurors and ignored the judge as he sustained repeated defense objections and instructed jurors to disregard her words.

In reversing the convictions, the appellate court took the unusual step of naming McCarthy but issued the ruling in an unpublished order. Courts issue their rulings in unpublished orders when they believe a case simply reiterates well-established points of law. Unpublished orders are not included in law books or electronic databases, although copies are placed in defendants' court files. Lawyer disciplinary officials regularly read published opinions for indications of misconduct, but not unpublished orders.

McCarthy left the office in 1984 and returned in 1987. In 1990, she was promoted to deputy chief of the narcotics prosecutions bureau.

As a judge, she hears abuse and neglect cases in Juvenile Court.

The misdeeds of other prosecutors get shrouded in the same ways as McCarthy's.

Appellate courts rarely name prosecutors or defense attorneys in their opinions, even when a lawyer is found to have acted abominably. The granting of anonymity isn't mandated anywhere, but instead stems from tradition and professional courtesy. The practice, though, has generated some second-guessing within the ranks of reviewing courts.

In a 1983 opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court suggested identifying overzealous prosecutors as a way to chastise them. Still, it rarely happens.

Ruth I. Abrams, a justice on Massachusetts' highest court, has urged her colleagues to name prosecutors who commit serious misconduct, citing the substantial costs shouldered by taxpayers, victims and others when a case has to be retried. "We fail in our duty to the public and the bar when we do not penalize publicly those prosecutors who engage in egregious conduct," she wrote.

At the same time, the use of unpublished orders has reached staggering levels. In 1996 and 1997, the most recent years for which statistics are available, the Illinois Appellate Court disposed of 91 percent of its criminal cases in unpublished orders.

The Tribune found eight unpublished orders issued during the last 13 months in which Cook County convictions were reversed because prosecutors violated the rules of a fair trial. In two of them, prosecutors were found to have discriminated against African-Americans during jury selection.

Moving on

In 1997, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed the convictions in two separate cases prosecuted by Patrick Quinn, finding that Quinn and his trial partners broke the rules of a fair trial.

But by the time those rulings were issued, Quinn had become a member of the appellate court himself.

In 1994, Quinn, as an assistant state's attorney, helped prosecute Umberto Perkins, a former Cook County Jail guard accused of official misconduct for helping an inmate to escape. Perkins was found guilty, but three years later the Illinois Appellate Court reversed the convictions and assailed the prosecutors.

At trial, two prosecution witnesses, both inmates when the escape occurred, denied receiving anything for testifying against Perkins. In fact, the appeals court said, both had bargained for and received reduced sentences -- a substantial benefit that could have been used to challenge their credibility.

By not correcting testimony that was either "substantially misleading or outright false," the court wrote, Quinn and his trial partner violated Perkins' constitutional rights by knowingly using perjured testimony to obtain his conviction.

Quinn did not participate in the appellate decision.

"I have no comment on the appellate court's ruling," Quinn said recently. "When the appellate court speaks, it speaks."

The court's opinion didn't name Quinn or the case's other prosecutor, Christopher Donnelly. And by the time the opinion was issued, Donnelly had moved on as well.

In 1994, two months after Perkins was convicted, Donnelly was elected a Cook County Circuit Court judge and hears delinquency petitions in Juvenile Court.

In March 1997, just months after Quinn became a judge, the appellate court reversed another defendant's conviction for gun charges because Quinn had unfairly presented evidence suggesting the defendant committed other crimes. The ruling was issued in an unpublished order that didn't name Quinn.

A third case Quinn prosecuted was reversed in 1990, while he was still a prosecutor. The appellate court set aside a murder conviction because Quinn engaged in improper cross-examination and final argument.

'An insult to the court'

In October of 1983, then-State's Atty. Richard M. Daley promoted Kenneth Wadas to chief of the office's narcotics unit.

That probably wasn't what the Illinois Appellate Court had in mind when, five months before, it called Wadas' conduct "an insult to the court and to the dignity of the trial bar," and suggested the possibility of disciplinary action.

Wadas, a former Marine who served in Vietnam, drew severe criticism from the courts in 1983. Ultimately, he would be investigated by the state's lawyer disciplinary agency for three cases that he prosecuted.

But Wadas wasn't disciplined, and his career didn't suffer. He did, though, learn his lesson and vowed not to make the same mistakes again, Wadas said in a recent interview.

#The Shadow Government of the World

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