Gerardo Tristan Jr.

Name: Gerardo Tristan Jr.

Age (as of Election Day): 50

Residence: Chicago, University Village neighborhood

Current position: Cook County circuit judge, 2019-present

Past legal experience: Assistant state’s attorney, Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, 2003-2019; 2002 prosecutor, Chicago Public Schools, 2002; attorney, Tristan & Cervantes

Campaign funds available, July 1 to Dec. 31: $29,065.53

Campaign funds spent, July 1 to Dec. 31: $12,034.44

Law school: DePaul University College of Law

Campaign website: tristanforjudge.com

Family: Married, two sons

Hobbies/interests: Sports. Playing softball. Being a Cub Scouts leader for son’s pack.

Have you ever run for office before?

Ran for Brighton Park school council in 1993.

Why should voters support your candidacy?

When voters look at my overall experience, I think that they will see that I have experience. I have tried over 250 felony cases to either a verdict or a finding. Of those 250, I’ve also tried 53 jury trials, up to first-chair murder trials as well. I’ve litigated over 150 pretrial motions, so I think I have a very vast wealth of experience having heard every type of felony case.

I do have some civil experience, as well having done the child support with the state’s attorney’s office, having done the abuse and neglect with the state’s attorney’s office, and also the one year that I spent in private practice with Chicago Public Schools and the law firm. I have a wealth of experience.

I’ve been rated by the bar associations, having been found “qualified” or “recommended” by all of them. I’ve also been on the job for a year; I’ve been doing the job of a judge for a year. I have the experience of a prosecutor, as an attorney and as a judge as well.

Why do you want to continue to be a judge?

I believe that there’s still a lot of work for me to do as a judge. I believe that I bring a perspective, having grown up in Brighton Park, I understand the people of the 14th Subcircuit. I believe that the people should be represented by someone who is from their community. I believe that they should be represented by someone who understands what it is to grow up in an area like Brighton Park, and I believe I bring that perspective to the bench.

What was the most interesting case you handled as a lawyer?

I first-chaired a murder trial in 2017. It was a group of young men who were driving around the city at the intersection of Damen and Division, when another group of men started to chase them in a car. One of the defendants, the driver of the car, thought that he recognized the driver of the other vehicle who he believed was a gang member. However, the people in the other car were from a different part of the city. They were not involved in gangs at all, but they drove away when this defendant started yelling at them, chasing them and bumping them with the car.

They chased them all the way from Damen and Division to Ashland and Grand, where, due to the continuous bumping of the defendant, the driver of the car crashed. The friends were able to flee, but the driver of the crash crashed into a median, so he was unable to escape. As he tried to escape from the passenger side, the defendant took out a handgun and fired at him, shot and killed him.

It was a murder case where the witnesses were the defendant’s friends, people that had been in the car with him. They all gave video-recorded statements; they gave handwritten statements; but then at the time of trial, they denied ever having given statements and denied ever having said what the defendants had done. We were able to put them on, cross-examine, and then, through [Code of Criminal Procedure section] 115-10 testimony, we were able to admit the prior statements as prior inconsistent statements; and the defendant was found guilty of the murder.

As a lawyer it was a case that I first-chaired; it was a murder of an innocent 24-year-old man who was doing nothing but hanging out on a warm April night in Chicago. We showed and were able to prove that the defendant was the one who shot this innocent man who had been on a weekend night trying to enjoy the city.

What would you consider your greatest career accomplishment?

What I take a lot of pride in is that I was a prosecutor for 16 years. My philosophy as a prosecutor was to always do the right thing and to do justice. I was never a prosecutor who tried to hide anything. My discovery was always complete; I always turned over every piece of evidence I had; I never kept anything. I had a policy with my defense counsel that if they ever wanted to see my file, I would sit down and go through a file review — so that, before we went to trial, they were aware that everything that was in my file they had.

My greatest accomplishment was that I was always honest with people, fair with people. Considering this being Cook County and all I knew, that I was able to stay above any of the faults that prosecutors had done in the past.

What qualities do you think you’ve already brought to the bench and that you plan to bring should you be elected?

The quality of being fair. I’m open-minded. I consider both sides of an issue. I listen to all of the facts before I make a decision. I respect the participants — the defense attorneys and the prosecutors. I think that I am a fair judge, plus I think that diversity is important. I have a Latino background, so I think I bring that perspective to the bench as well.

I think it’s important for the people of Cook County to see that the bench reflects who they are. The 14th Subcircuit is a majority Latino subcircuit, so I think it’s important that diversity as well as my experience is brought to the bench.

Having experienced discrimination, I know that I can be fair because I won’t apply any of those biases to anybody who comes before me, regardless of their ethnicity. We have a long way to go in order to eradicate implied biases, and I think that I’m aware of that.

Cook County under Chief Judge [Timothy] Evans is doing a good job to inform the judiciary of some of these implied biases that people are not aware of. However, having experienced some of the discrimination, I think that I’m cognizant of the fact that I should not judge a person by how they look or who they are, either gender, sexual orientation or ethnicity.