FeedBull
August 27, 2006 in Overset
Peoria County State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons got himself quoted in today’s Terry Bibo column on proposed solutions to violence:
Asked what his office will do differently, the state’s attorney says he will assign specific prosecutors to each of the four high schools before Labor Day to create a more direct relationship. And he is considering doing the same for the most active neighborhood associations, such as Gift Avenue and Averyville.
“As much as people want to call them ‘whiners,’ the fact is they’re the eyes and the ears and the reporters of their streets,” he says of the neighborhood groups.
I like the idea of making specific prosecutors responsible for prosecuting crimes that happen in different neighborhoods or different high schools.
But Lyons is parroting the same drivel I’ve been hearing since I started this blog five years ago this coming January. “Eyes and ears,” they say. “Be our eyes and ears,” they tell people who live in the older neighborhoods.
It is a load of crap. Ask someone who’s been a neighborhood activist for for a long time. They will tell you that even if the police and prosecutors are willing to listen, the police rarely make arrests and prosecutions happen even less often when the crime is non-violent or not particularly sensational.
Oh, there are exceptions. If a complaint happens to make it’s way to the newspaper or to a blog that is reasonably well-read, THEN something gets done. Bureaucrats don’t care if the city goes to c rap, but they do care about bad publicity and it’s worth getting out of their chair to avoid that.
People who live in older neighborhoods are sick of the bull. They are sick of promises that carry less weight than the average New Years resolution. ‘Oh, this year I’m gonna do a better job … ‘
Talk to the leaders of neighborhood organizations. They will tell you exactly who the slackers are. They will tell you which code enforcement officers seem to be pals with which scumlords. They will tell you which high ranking city officials lack concern for neighborhood issues. If they’ve had a run-in with housing court, they know which city attorney’s don’t do their jobs well.
And since members of the Peoria City Council love to talk about how in-touch they are with neighborhood associations, these council members have presumably heard these stories.
So why aren’t people losing their jobs for incompetence? Why is the city council more concerned about being fair to poor and mediocre performers in City Hall than they are to the taxpayers?
There had better be some changes very damn soon, or I absolutely guarantee some current members of the city council will lose their jobs when at large elections are held in April 2007.
The voters are fed up and feel good, do little ordinances are NOT going to get the job done. Only real progress will do the trick.
August 27th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
Billy,
So Lyon’s wants names, eh?
I was talking about Bibo’s column with one of my cop buddies and he laughed about the “names” part and threw out the name of this drug fiend named Joe Campen. He told me this guy is a one man wrecking crew when it comes to drugs and burglaries and when it comes to jail he is similar to that of porn stars: non-stop in and out.
So there is a start.
August 27th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
Let’s see some proof of what you are saying. it’s easy to gripe. Show us some facts.
August 27th, 2006 at 5:37 pm
You talking to Billy or me?
If you are talking to me, you can probably do a search of the PJS archives and see all sorts of arrests of this asshole.
Or, get off your bum and do a FOIA at the police department…
Or, maybe ask some of this dude’s neighbors…..
Or, become friends with a few cops and ask them….
August 28th, 2006 at 10:37 am
The part that made me furious was when he blamed the jurors for requiring too much proof a la CSI. The vast majority of these drug cases are NOT CSI-type cases; the only cases I’ve seen in Peoria that have gotten “CSI-ed” by jurors demanding better proof have been rape cases. Maybe I’ve missed drug lords getting off in Peoria because of jurors demanding DNA and facial reconstructions and so forth, but I’d be interested to hear of it. Weakest. Excuse. Ever. “We don’t lock people up because we get consistently bad juries.” Seriously???? There’s no fault in the State’s Attorney’s office? It’s just that the juries all watch too much TV? And the office hasn’t come up with a way to respond to this problem?
Oh, the whole interview was infuriating. I wanted to scream.
August 28th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
EM,
US News and World Report did an article on this “CSI” issue and from what I’ve learned from my friends, it is a huge problem. People who watch these shows expect miracles to happen. Here’s the link to the story:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/c...../25csi.htm
Also, I have been told that the quality of jurors has went down the toilet since juror pools now come from driver licenses and not voting registration - and if you think of it, that does make sense.
TV does have a huge impact on the perception of citizens and that is just a sad fact of American life.
August 28th, 2006 at 11:54 pm
i juried a case a couple years ago (church break-in) and the police did a terrible job putting together some evidence. no fingerprints, no witnesses, nothing.
August 29th, 2006 at 12:01 am
When I read police reports, I see that they often don’t bother with break-ins because the victim had the audacity to walk around disturbing things before the police arrive.
August 29th, 2006 at 12:03 am
But … you also have to remember that a defense attorney is going to go to great lengths to protray any forensic evidence as sloppy and mishandled and hopelessly tainted. That’s why cops like confessions and eyewitnesses more than science.
August 29th, 2006 at 9:14 am
“US News and World Report did an article on this “CSI” issue and from what I’ve learned from my friends, it is a huge problem.”
Scot,
I know it is (my husband does defense work; my brother is a Cook County prosecutor), but the kinds of cases Lyons is talking about are not the kinds of cases that suffer from the CSI effect. Yes, the CSI effect is a problem. (However, the greater problem is often attorneys who do a poor job presenting their case, or god-awful jury instructions that make it unclear to the jury what they’re trying to do and what evidence to consider, which leaves the jury with CSI as their basis for decision-making.) But the cases Lyons and the anonymous complainant in the article are talking about are NOT cases susceptible to the CSI effect. Frankly, most of them wouldn’t even go to a jury.
“Also, I have been told that the quality of jurors has went down the toilet since juror pools now come from driver licenses and not voting registration – and if you think of it, that does make sense.”
I actually don’t believe this part. I worked as a research assistant on the only study of jury behavior that has been allowed inside the jury rooms during deliberations in US history, and that was absolutely not in evidence (um - no pun). Press release on the study here: http://www.law.duke.edu/featur.....study.html but I can’t find the study itself not behind a pay website. I think lawyers generally bitch a lot about jurors because lawyers have this, like, entire lore about “what jurors think/do/are” that turn out to have no basis in reality. No matter what change is made to the jury pool, or to voir dire, or anything, lawyers insist it has degraded the quality of the juries.
(But, hey, at least it made Dr. Phil rich and famous.)
But my real point was that I find Kevin Lyons’s assertion that he can’t do his job and convict local criminals - local PETTY criminals - because of the “CSI effect” to be absolutely ridiculous and utterly appalling. Other than a very tiny handful of cases, this ISN’T the problem in Peoria and it’s not the sort of cases the complainant was complaining about. It read to me like either, “I’m not going to bother prosecuting people because you’re not going to convict them anyway, so there” or “My office isn’t capable of putting on a strong enough case to convince a jury — so let’s blame the jury for our ineptitude.”
I have several friends in the Peoria SAO, and I know they’re not incompetent. They’re great lawyers. So to me it’s doubly appalling that Lyons is making these statements that make his employees look incompetent and that undermines the hard work they do. If there are political or budgetary reasons the State’s Attorney fails to prosecute so many criminals, then we need to know that and we need to fix that. If it’s incompetence in the SAO, then we REALLY need to know that (although I sincerely doubt that knowing the caliber of people they have on staff). But regardless, Lyons mouthing off and blaming JURORS - of all things - for the crime problems in Peoria is ridiculous. It reads like he’s saying, “There’s nothing wrong with how my office does things, and I’m not changing anything. If you think there’s a problem with crime in Peoria, it’s your fault, not mine, and I have no responsibility for it.”
I don’t know whose FAULT Peoria crime is. But I know that kind of attitude isn’t helpful — particularly from the people responsible for protecting us.
August 29th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
EM,
There is an old saying about jury duty that I think is very timely and it goes something like this: Most of the people on jury trials are those not smart enough to get out of them.
So, this is one problem.
Secondly, you cited a study that examined CIVIL juries. As we both know, civil juries and criminal juries are two completely different animals with two different standards of proof. And with these two different standards of proof, all sorts of things come in: jury members have been cited (not just in Peoria County) as aquitting an accused on things from looking like a nice young man, to race to that of just not wanting to convict. Also, there is little information about the types of jury selection, location, et cetera in the study you cited and worked on.
Knowing a little bit about research (and having forgotten much more) there are many variables that would influence a jury pool: county demographics, jury selection methods, race, class, gender, education and so on.
With that, let’s look at the way Peoria County juries are selected: holders of a driver license versus voter registration. Now, let’s be honest here, do you really disagree that when both of these groups are statistically weighted and examined that there are the same amount of people of a similar quality cut from the same cloth in both of these groups?