EXTRA: ‘Not Guilty?’ It’s just a plea

I can already hear the rants and rages coming from people in response to the fact that four young people facing criminal charges for the beating of a teenager with mental disabilities entered pleas of “not guilty” on Friday.
 

HOOKS: Here comes da judge!

“How dare those f---ers (or whatever racial slur they prefer to use) plead NOT guilty” to the crime that we all got to see committed because someone pulled out their phone, video-recorded the beating, then put it on Facebook for the world to see.

YET BEFORE WE get worked up about Tesfaye Cooper and Jordan Hill, both 18, and sisters Tanisha and Brittany Covington (24 and 19, respectively), keep in mind that the purpose of the hearing Friday in Cook County Criminal Court was for their criminal case to be assigned to the judge who eventually will oversee their trial – or take their “guilty” plea if they choose to make one.

Cooper

All of them have been held without bond at the Cook County Jail since their arrest last month. They’re not going anywhere. This was just the start of the process that can easily take a couple of years before the criminal case is resolved.

For those people who want to think criminals should just plead their guilt and take whatever punishment is handed down to them, it doesn’t work that way.

Covington, T.

In fact, the four people facing assorted criminal charges, including aggravated kidnapping and hate crimes, could not have entered a “guilty” plea on Friday even if they wanted to. They plead “not guilty,” get assigned to a trial judge, then at some future date attorneys for the prosecution and defense negotiate the actual outcome.

Covington, B.

THE NEWS FROM the courthouse on Friday was that it will be Judge William H. Hooks who will preside over the trial of the four. He’ll be the one who winds up getting his moment of international glory, because the Facebook aspect of this case ensures the “world will be watching” to see what becomes of the young people who allegedly beat up a white boy as a way of venting their anger at the election of Donald Trump.

Hill

Although personally, I think it’s possible to make too much of that angle. It really doesn’t matter what convoluted reasoning they had for the attack – it was the suffering that the 18-year-old victim who is diagnosed with schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder endured during the beating.

There is no real reason anyone should ever have to go through such an ordeal.

And I’m sure by the time this case is resolved (it often takes two years or so to get through a criminal case in Cook County), Judge Hooks will feel similarly spent.

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EXTRA: Judgely?

SIMS: Judgely?

I’m sure she meant well, but listening to Cook County Commissioner Deborah Sims, D-Chicago, pay tribute Wednesday to one-time county Sheriff and Judge Richard Elrod couldn’t help but give me the quip of the day from a politico.

How else to explain, “I don’t know how you define a judge, but he was as judgely as a judge could be.”

ELROD, WHO SERVED four four-year terms as sheriff before moving up the ranks to serve as a judge for a quarter of a century, died last month. He was 80, and suffered from complications due to cancer of the liver.

ELROD: Long career after injury

Elrod, whose father, Arthur, was once a Cook County commissioner himself, had an incident in his life that would have traumatized many – a broken neck during a 1969 altercation during the “Days of Rage” Vietnam-era anti-war protests that left him with limited mobility.

Yet other commissioners who paid tribute to Elrod on Wednesday during the county board’s meeting made mention of how he did not let that injury get the best of him – and was literally still on the Cook County bench at the time of his death April 19.

And as for Sims, her quip is notable, although not quite on the level with the elder Richard Daley once telling us the police were there to "preserve" disorder.

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