Book: There Are No Children Here
Author: Alex Kotlowitz
Excerpt: “The prosecution, though, was already overburdened with cases. It didn’t want to go to trial. The three prosecutors in the courtroom where Terence’s case was to be heard handled about 450 cases at a time, up from 250 cases the year before. They suspected part of the reason was political. Their boss, Richard M. Daley, was running for mayor, so the more cases they prosecuted, particularly those related to drugs, the more convinced the electorate would be that he was a strong law-and-order man. In fact, of the twenty-five thousand drug defendants in the county the previous year, over half had their cases dismissed or their charges dropped, according to one study.”
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Posted on September 8, 2010