Courtroom 302

Dan Locallo (now retired) was the judge at Cook County Courthouse and is the center of Bogira’s exploration of The Injustices of the US Justice System. He lived in the affluent Chicago suburb of Norwood Park, comprised mostly of white people of Polish, German, Italian, and Irish descent. He had a sister and two brothers. His older brother, Victor, was the family rebel but was later “diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic” (197). Victor died by suicide at the age of 24. Locallo believed that knowing Victor taught him “to be more compassionate and tolerant of people who are different” (197). That said, he believed people mainly operated according to their free will and could not use their backgrounds as excuses. Locallo was raised near his current neighborhood. He married a woman named Jean, a teacher’s aide. Together, they had two children, five years apart—Kevin and Lauren, both of whom attended Catholic school. 

Locallo was born in October 1952 to August Locallo, a former police officer. Two months later, his father became a Chicago cop and spent the 1950s and 1960s working as a robbery detective. It was from his father that Locallo developed an interest in the law. Locallo’s interest also emerged from having watched To Kill a Mockingbird at a movie theater in Little Rock, Arkansas—his mother’s hometown—when he was 10. Recalling Atticus Finch’s sense of unwavering justice brought Locallo to tears. He religiously watched the film, and he expressed particular pride in how Black people stood up when Finch left the courtroom. It was likely significant, too, that Locallo first saw the film in a town whose Black residents had, in 1957, coped with the difficult desegregation of Little Rock High School. He grew up with fantasies of running for president and admired John F. Kennedy, whose portraits decorated his office. 

Locallo grew up in a predominantly white Chicago suburb and attended predominantly white schools, including Notre Dame High—a Catholic high school where he played baseball and football. His mother was Irish American, while August’s ancestors came from Sicily. His uncle, Victor Locallo, was connected to organized crime and ended up getting five years’ probation due to his work with a crime syndicate that controlled gambling “in five midwestern states” (69). Locallo admitted that, growing up, he heard negative stereotypes about Black people from his father and uncle, who was also a cop. He graduated from John Marshall Law School—now a part of the University of Illinois—in 1977. Through his father’s connections, he quickly obtained work as a prosecutor.

The deputies at 26th Street Courthouse perceived Locallo as overly compassionate. However, in numerous instances, Locallo expressed inadvertent racial and class bias. Locallo became a prosecutor in 1978 and a judge nine years later at the age of 33. In the latter role, he spent six working months at traffic court and then went to the municipal division, where he handled the overwhelming number of misdemeanor arrests that entered police branches throughout the 1970s. His mentors were Judge James Bailey and Judge William Cousins—both Black judges. Locallo used this fact to dispel any suspicion that racism had ever been a factor in his courtroom. Bar associations lauded him for “his intelligence, diligence, fairness, and integrity” (31). Prosecutors disliked Locallo and believed that he was overly deferential to defense lawyers due to his interest in getting on the appellate court, where defense attorneys have more influence. 

Locallo was a proud judge but abhorred pretentiousness. Thus, he disliked the deputies commanding everyone to rise in preparation for his arrival to the bench and saw no point in forbidding people from talking or reading in the courtroom, given that they were sitting in “a sealed-off gallery” (33). On the other hand, Judge Locallo had a taste for off-color, irreverent humor—even that which could be considered racist. He also enjoyed puns. Locallo regarded himself as a man with a strong sense of justice and would balk at any accusation of racism, despite being less sympathetic to the plight of Black defendants—particularly those with drug use disorders. His hard line on drug use included both a strong aversion to legalization and the belief that those who avoided rehabilitation should be sterilized—a form of eugenics. 

At the time he was interviewed for this book, Locallo was 45 years old. He had full, wavy black hair that was graying at the temples. In October 2004, Locallo turned 52 and presided over civil suits in a downtown courtroom.

Lenard Clark was the 13-year-old victim of a racially motivated beating when he entered the predominantly white neighborhood of Bridgeport in March 1997 with his friend, Clevan Nicholson, to pump his bicycle tires. Clark resided with his mother and three siblings at the Stateway Gardens housing project until the city paid for Lenard and his family to move to “a middle-class south-side neighborhood, in a four-bedroom home furnished with new appliances and furniture contributed by merchants” (65). Clark recovered from his injuries and later visited his alleged victimizer, Frank Caruso Jr. in prison, not long after Martin Luther King Day.

Bogira doesn’t present as full a picture of Clark as he does of his assailant, Frank Caruso Jr. This isn’t because he deems Clark as less worthy of attention but to reinforce the notion that the city regarded Clark less an individual and more as a symbolic victim of Chicago’s history of racial strife.

Deputy Guerrero, one of the officers who worked at the 26th Street Courthouse, was 27 years old at the time Bogira wrote Courtroom 302. Guerrero was raised in McKinley Park, “a predominately white, working class” area near the courthouse in which he later worked (88). Guerrero was Mexican American, and McKinley Park was riddled with white, racist gangs. Guerrero, too, associated with gang members when he was in high school and was shot in the back in 1989 by a member of his friends’ rival gang while sitting in the passenger seat of the friend’s car. 

At his mother’s encouragement, Guerrero left Chicago and joined the army. He was stationed for two years in Germany and another two in California. Guerrero then returned to Chicago and applied for a position with the sheriff’s department. He started work in 1995 and secured a permanent position two years later in Courtroom 302. His partner was Deputy Laura Rhodes.

Larry Bates was a 44-year-old probationer who spent time in and out of jail for possession of crack cocaine. Bates sold drugs to afford his habit. He began drinking and using drugs when he was in his mid-twenties, in response to dire unemployment. His father, who had been a truck driver, was addicted to alcohol. The elder Bates was a sporadic presence in his family’s life and died of liver cancer. Bates’s mother, on the other hand, never drank and was a devout Pentecostal. Bates, the eldest of 12 children, followed his mother Ann’s faith. Ann was 65 years old at the time of her son’s trial. As a boy, Bates was a good student and liked to keep busy. He graduated from high school in 1973 and in 1975, married a woman named Vanessa who attended his church. He earned “a city college certificate in auto mechanics” and “worked as a drywaller, a roofer, and a machine operator” (194). 

Bates and Vanessa married and had two daughters—in 1976 and 1977, respectively. Vanessa suffered from both postpartum depression and paranoid schizophrenia, which led her to drown one of their daughters, Latisa, when the infant was 22 days old. After Vanessa was committed to an asylum, Bates began drinking to cope with his grief. Vanessa Bates died in 1995. 

Bates’s alcohol use disorder was exacerbated by his unemployment. In 1983, his younger brother was stabbed to death in the street. Bates married twice more in the same decade, though neither of his unions lasted. Ann Bates believed that her son’s troubles started because of the losses of his wife and daughter. In the mid-1980s, some friends offered him crack cocaine, and Bates quickly became addicted. 

In the 1990s, Bates moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to get sober. He remained for three years and found work in factories and warehouses. He still smoked crack, but less often. In 1995, he moved back to Chicago to be near his family. Bates had three additional children. He was arrested in 1996 for buying $5 worth of crack. He pled guilty and got probation, but he kept smoking cocaine. His habit became expensive, which led him to deal drugs to pay for it. Bates dealt drugs to avoid the compulsion to steal—worried about what others would think of him if he resorted to theft. His aversion to such behavior, as well as his shame over his arrests, demonstrate his great pride and self-awareness. He knew his addiction presented a dead-end, but he didn’t have the mental wherewithal to avoid relapse. 

Bates was arrested for a second time in 1997 for dealing drugs and spent 78 days in jail. During his time in Cook County Jail, he avoided getting raped or beaten up as a result of having reunited with a high school friend who was a high-ranking member of the Vice Lords gang. The gang member ensured that no one bothered Bates. Judge Locallo gave Bates probation again in March 1997, but treatment was never offered. Bates remained sober for several months after his release but relapsed again and was sent to prison. Upon his release, he worked a series of minimum-wage jobs and focused on his relationships with his children and grandchildren.

Frank Caruso Jr. was charged as the primary instigator in the attack on Lenard Clark in Caruso’s neighborhood of Bridgeport. Caruso Jr. was an 18-year-old high school student and came from an Italian family tied to organized crime. Caruso was a “short, slight” man with “trimmed dark hair, brown eyes, and an olive complexion” (186). His father, Frank “Toots” Caruso Sr. had supposedly been a member of the 26th Street Crew. Frank Jr.’s great-grandfather, Bruno Roti, was a Sicilian immigrant who arrived in Chicago in 1909. Roti was “a beer distributor” and “a leader of the Democratic Club in the city’s First Ward, which was known for corruption (186). He was the grandson of Frank “Skid” Caruso, who controlled gambling in the area. “Toots” became a supervisor in the 26th Street Crew when his father died in 1983. Frank Sr. also represented laborers in several Chicago unions. By 1998, he was “an associate director of a $775 million union pension fund” (188). 

Caruso Jr. was known among his friends for being violently racist toward Black people and resorted to violence to keep them out of Bridgeport. He used his family’s leverage in the community not only to terrorize Black people but also white residents with whom he got into minor conflicts. Caruso was found guilty of beating Lenard Clark but ultimately served a short sentence due to successfully applying to a work-release program. Despite being found guilty of hate crimes—other Black witnesses also testified against him at his trial—and attempted murder, Caruso is an example of how white defendants are often shown greater favor: He spent only 18 months in a correctional facility.

Orange was a “bald, broad-shouldered, middle-aged African American” man at the time that the book was written (171). He was 46 years old and had “been on death row for thirteen years” (171). Orange was convicted for killing four people on January 12, 1985, with his half-brother Leonard Kidd. 

Orange had experienced abuse during his childhood, doled out by a mother and stepfather with alcohol use disorders; the latter was Leonard Kidd’s biological father. Despite his tendencies to resort to violence, Orange helped his sister raise her first child when she got pregnant at 13. He also cared for his stepson, who had sickle-cell disease. Orange’s landlord described him as a good tenant and a good worker. During his 14 years in prison, too, Orange did not get into trouble. 

Orange testified that he experienced numerous instances of torture at the Area 2 precinct where he was questioned for his alleged crime. He claimed he was forced into making a confession after the cops there shoved a cattle prod into his anus and attempted to suffocate him with a plastic bag. Orange is exemplary of how some police officers attempted to force confessions out of suspects to close a case. He is also exemplary of racism within the criminal justice system, given that the victims of such practices usually tended to be African American. Locallo’s refusal to listen to Orange’s story, which undermined his own biases, strongly suggests that Locallo was complicit with the corrupt system he claimed to eschew. Orange’s case thus demonstrates The Influences of Corruption and Politics on Criminal Courts.

Dan Young Jr. was “a short, slight” 37-year-old African American man from Yazoo, Mississippi, “with wide, wondering eyes and a jutting jaw” (199). Young had an IQ in the 50s. He was one of five children born to Lillie Young. During his early youth, his family moved to Chicago. He wasn’t enrolled in school until he was nine and was placed in special education classes. Young never learned to read and could write very little, including his name. When he was 20, he began drinking and quickly developed an alcohol addiction. He had once been picked up by police for being drunk and disorderly. In March 1992, he was questioned “about a sexual assault and murder” (201). The body of 39-year-old Kathy Morgan was found in October 1990. Objects had been shoved into her vagina and rectum. Her death was attributed to “blunt trauma to her head” (201). An 18-year-old robbery suspect named Harold Hill implicated Young and another young man, Peter Williams, in the crime against Morgan, claiming all three had committed the rape and murder. Young was serving a life sentence for murder and sexual assault, though he always maintained his innocence. Judge Locallo ruled to find out if Young should get a retrial, due to his having possibly been too impaired to stand trial because of the medication he was taking in prison. Young is one of several people with intellectual disabilities who get ensorcelled in the criminal justice system due to society’s failure to provide them with the assistance that they need.