Timothy C. Evans
Cook County Chief Circuit Judge Timothy C. Evans on Thursday won election to a sixth term as the court’s top judge.
He said he looks forward to helping the court — one of the largest unified systems in the country — take its next “quantum jump forward” during his next three years in the post.
Evans secured 129 of 234 votes in a closed-door meeting of circuit judges at the Daley Center to beat Circuit Judge Thomas R. Allen, who serves in the Chancery Division and received 103 votes in support of his bid to become chief.
Two ballots were spoiled during the counting process, a spokesman from the chief judge’s office said. One ballot was blank and the other contained both Allen’s and Evans’ names.
The new three-year term begins in December. And with 15 years already spent in the position, it sets Evans up to become the longest-serving chief judge in the circuit court’s 52-year history. Former chief judge Harry G. Comerford served in the role from 1978 until his retirement in 1994 — a total of 16 years.
Evans said he looks forward to working with Allen and his supporters to address concerns that were raised among circuit judges through the election process.
But it’s not a matter of addressing only those who voted against him, Evans stressed.
“I have an open-door policy, and what I’m assuming is that as I invite people to share concerns with me, whether they voted for me or Judge Allen … we put aside who they voted for in a given election, and their concerns are addressed one judge to another,” he said.
Circuit Judge Thomas W. Murphy, a fellow city alderman-turned-judge who formally nominated Allen in the election, said he was disappointed with the results but trusts Evans will make good on his desire to open a dialogue.
“I take him at his word that he will,” Murphy said.
“I look forward to working with Judge Evans as we continue to work to improve our judicial system in Cook County and make sure that we have accountability and transparency in the court. We’re looking for cooperation, and that’s what he’s pledged to do and we’re very happy with that.”
Evans was quick after the vote to tout some of the court’s ongoing efforts, such as the restorative justice community court set to debut in January and technologies that would allow mental health commitment hearings to take place by video conference.
“I’m absolutely thrilled to have another term to continue to address the needs of the litigants and the lawyers who appear before our courts every day and to do it with the experience that I’ve gained being given the opportunity to serve,” Evans said.
The coming restorative justice court seeks to facilitate justice with qualifying non-violent offenders to both adjudicate the offense that brought them to court and restore relationships between the offenders and their community members.
The program is set to debut in North Lawndale in January, and it’s one Evans said he expects to expand to other “hot-spot” communities in which such kinds of offenders continue a pattern of committing criminal offenses.
“I’m anxious to pursue programs like that,” he said.
The court has also adopted a rule to allow for video conferences in mental health commitment hearings, where interested patients and doctors could participate in the proceedings without having to leave their respective medical facilities.
The initiative is based on the same kind of idea behind a call in Circuit Judge Grace G. Dickler’s Domestic Relations Division courtroom in which people who are incarcerated and wish to get a divorce can do so by participating in the proceedings remotely.
“These are marvelously innovative programs designed to take quantum jumps forward in ways that may not have been tried before,” Evans said.
He also said he looks forward to implementing a program that will work with juveniles in the court to provide mental health and other health-oriented services that would impact their participation in proceedings.
The program would stretch to children and teens who appear in the Juvenile Justice Division, the Child Protection Division, those being supervised in juvenile probation those held in the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, he said.
“Those are the kinds of quantum jumps I’m talking about — scientifically based but with the welfare of the general public being at the forefront,” he said. “I’m confident that we can continue to be a model for the country in the services that we provide to those that participate in our system.”
Circuit Judge Diane Joan Larsen, who nominated Evans, said her nominating speech focused on Evans’ “lengthy tenure” both as the court’s chief judge and his time serving on the city council.
She said she also focused on the fact that the court’s leadership is the most diverse it’s been in court history. The diversity among presiding and supervising judges was a criticism raised by Circuit Judge Sandra Gisela Ramos in a note she sent to colleagues Wednesday withdrawing her name from the running.
“The presiding judges are just the most diverse, and that’s really directly attributable to Judge Evans because he appoints the presiding judges,” she said.
She said she looks forward to Evans’ leadership in continuing the court down paths to make it a leader in the nation.
“There’s a lot of innovation that comes from him, and I’m looking forward to that innovation continuing,” she said. “ … He has been a great ambassador for the judges.”