Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx won't run for re-election in 2024
CHICAGO (CBS) – Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx announced Tuesday she won't be running for re-election next year.
"I am announcing today that, at the conclusion of my term in November of 2024, I will be stepping down as State's Attorney. I will not be on next year's ballot by my choice," Foxx said during a City Club of Chicago luncheon. "I leave now with my head held high, with my heart full, knowing that better days are ahead."
Foxx announced her decision after delivering a passionate defense of her more than six years in office, following near constant attacks from critics who have blamed her for a spike in crime in Chicago and Cook County in recent years.
"I want to thank my detractors who are also here today, because it is because of you that I have learned to really dig into why; the why I do what I do," Foxx said.
Foxx told the crowd she had written two versions of a speech to deliver - and held both versions up in the air. But she then said she was not going to use either, and spoke from the heart. She addressed her critics, and explained why she believes she has done everything she set out to do when she was first elected.
The 51-year-old Foxx also reflected on her challenging childhood growing up a "projects kid" — including a stint of homelessness.
"I shouldn't be the inspiration," Foxx said. "I should be the expectation - so when I did come into office, I did center that lived experience."
Foxx, who was first elected to office in 2016 as the first Black woman to serve as the county's top prosecutor, has faced intense criticism in her two terms, from her office's charging decisions, to her handling of high profile cases involving disgraced singer R. Kelly and actor Jussie Smollett.
But Foxx has touted her support for progressive criminal justice reforms, saying "I came on a mandate to acknowledge what the system was supposed to be."
After taking office, she established a new threshold for prosecutors to seek felony charges in retail theft cases, and oversaw a mass expungement of low-level marijuana convictions ahead of the legalization of recreational marijuana in Illinois.
"A low-level marijuana conviction does not mean someone is a threat to public safety," Foxx said.
Foxx also was one of few state's attorneys in Illinois who supported a criminal justice reform law that aims to end cash bail across the state, but has been temporarily put on hold due to court challenges.
Foxx has said that it's unfair to base decisions on why people accused of crimes should stay in jail on whether or not they can afford to pay for bail, noting some people have decided to plead guilty to crimes they did not commit simply to take a deal to get out of jail.
Foxx has also noted that violent crime went down in Cook County the first three years she was in office, before the COVID-19 pandemic led to a spike in crime nationwide, taking a shot at critics who have blamed her for a rise in violent crime since 2020.
"Now I'm not suggesting – because that would be factually inaccurate – that anything that I have done would lead to violent crime going down, which is why I refute the supposition that where we see ourselves today, with a rise in violent crime that coincides with a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, is somehow the result of the Cook County State's Attorney's office. It just doesn't add up," she said.
Meantime, her office also has faced a significant exodus of prosecutors, with crime victims' families complaining that their justice has been delayed thanks to a growing number of pending cases.
Data obtained by the CBS 2 Investigators show more Cook County assistant state's attorneys resigned last year in any other year in the last decade. But the State's Attorney's Office said that hasn't impacted cases.
Simply put, more assistant state's attorneys are leaving. From just 11 resignations in 2012, to 136 who called it quits last year, the highest in a decade.
At last check earlier this month, the office had 143 vacancies. That's about 18% of all assistant state's attorney positions that the office is budgeted for. Former assistant state's attorney Brian Sexton said morale is low and there's a lack of faith in office leaders.
"All that institutional knowledge is being lost," Sexton said.
"COVID obviously had a big thing to do with it," Sexton said. "The Supreme Court said you couldn't demand trial during the pandemic, but for them to say staffing doesn't have anything to do with it, we know better than that."
CBS 2 asked the State's Attorney's Office if staffing issues are contributing to the pending caseload and the wait for families. The office said no.
"We prioritized areas that needed the most support to adjust for assistant state's attorney vacancies," a spokesperson said, adding that the office is resolving cases back to pre-COVID levels.
One of those 2022 resignations was James Murphy, who in a scathing resignation email in July, after 25 years on the job, said staffing levels are at an all-time low and the office was "hemorrhaging talent."
"People are leaving in droves," Murphy wrote. "It is clear as to why. It is not because of COVID."
The departures have led to dozens of positions just sitting open on the Cook County State's Attorney's office website. Not long ago, insiders say those were highly-sought-after jobs of a lifetime – and now, they have to now be advertised.
"That tells you that the office is not run well, and that there's something wrong in there," said retired Illinois Appellate Court Judge Sheila O'Brien, "Those used to be such coveted jobs. It was so hard to get to be State's Attorney. Now they're advertising. "
Sexton said the county needs to budget for more positions and the State's Attorney's Office needs to fill them.
A spokesperson for State's Attorney Kim Foxx's office said assistant state's attorney hiring is "cyclical." Since Jan. 1, they've received 116 applications for attorney positions and are in the process of reviewing them.
Foxx also has faced repeated criticism from Mayor Lori Lightfoot and top brass at the Chicago Police Department over her office's charging decisions, as well as how prosecutors handle bond requests, with critics blaming Foxx's office for an increased reliance on electronic monitoring, even though decisions on conditions of bond are up to judges.
Lightfoot was especially critical of prosecutors' decision to reject charges against several people in custody in a deadly West Side shootout in October 2021, with the mayor and several aldermen sending Foxx a letter asking her to reconsider, writing "we can't live in a world where there's no accountability."
Foxx defended the decision, saying there wasn't sufficient evidence to file charges, and that Lightfoot made statements about the case that "were not factually accurate."
Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel also blasted Foxx in March 2019, after her office dropped disorderly charges against actor Jussie Smollett over his claims he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack, calling Foxx's decision "a whitewash of justice." A special prosecutor later reinstated the charges against Smollett and he was convicted on five of six counts against him.
The same special prosecutor also issued a report finding Foxx and her office misled the public time and again while handling the Smollett case.
Smollett was convicted last year of lying to Chicago Police about being attacked in January 2019, but Foxx's office dropped the original charges in the case, raising serious questions and doubt from the public.
Five months after Foxx's office dropped the initial charges against Smollett, without requiring him to admit any guilty, special prosecutor Dan Webb was tasked with taking over the case and reinvestigating both Smollett's claims and Foxx's handling of the case. Webb ultimately brought new charges against Smollett, and the actor was found guilty of charges he orchestrated a fake hate crime against himself. He was sentenced to 150 days in jail, but remains free while he appeals his conviction.
Webb's report cleared Foxx's office of any crimes in her handling of the case, but found "substantial abuses of discretion and operational failures" in prosecuting and later dropping charges against Smollett.
Despite the intense criticism she faced in the Smollett case, Foxx handily defeated three challengers in the Democratic primary in 2020, and was re-elected that fall by a 15-point margin over Republican challenger Pat O'Brien.
Foxx has repeatedly defended her decision to drop non-violent criminal charges against Smollett, who she described Tuesday as a "D-list actor who committed a crime against himself." She said Tuesday she is asked more about her handling of the Jussie Smollett case than she is about people who have been wrongfully convicted after being framed by two infamously corrupt Chicago police officers, Detective Reynaldo Guevara and Sgt. Ronald Watts.
"Surely, State's Attorney Foxx, you know that has caused shame and embarrassment to our criminal justice system. Surely, State's Attorney Foxx, you know we are all embarrassed," Foxx said, mocking her critics.
"Mark Clark, Fred Hampton, 1969," she added, referring to the Black Panther Party members who were assassinated on Dec. 4, 1969, during a raid on the party's West Side headquarters by police and federal agents, ordered by then-Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan. "I mean, I'm not here to judge where we put our priorities, but the fact that I have been asked, and that more ink has been spilled by editorial pages, and newspapers, and reporters, that probably when I leave this Earth, my epitaph, my obituary will mention Jussie Smollett makes me mad."
Foxx highlighted five people in the City Club of Chicago audience — including wrong-raid victim Anjanette Young — as people with stories we should be asking about instead of that of Smollett
Foxx also came under fire in January, after her office decided to drop four sexual abuse and sexual assault indictments against singer R. Kelly, following his convictions in two separate federal trials. Foxx said, with Kelly likely to spend the rest of his life in prison already, her office's limited resources would be better spent on other cases. Critics, however, have said the accusers in the Cook County cases won't get the justice they deserve.
CBS 2 Legal Analyst Irv Miller – himself a former Cook County prosecutor – said policy issues and management style were the biggest problems critics identified with Foxx's administration.
"She came into the office basically changing the way; the philosophy of the State's Attorney's office. In the past, it was a tough office – if you committed a crime, you had to pay the price," Miller said. "She came in there with a different theory – basically a restorative justice type theory, where she tried to go over and above what a prosecutor typically does. A lot of people said she was really the Public Defender of Cook County and not the State's Attorney of Cook County.
"And the second issue goes to management style," Miller continued. "She just did not run the office in a way that her assistants felt comfortable, and that's why we have seen hundreds of resignations in the last couple of years of not only young assistant state's attorneys, but senior assistant state's attorneys – the guys that provide the training for the younger assistant state's attorneys. When that group left, that was a serious blow to the State's Attorney's office. And frankly, I don't know how it can recover in the very near term. It may take a while. But it's definitely not the office that it used to be."
Miller told CBS 2's Chris Tye the departures do not reflect well on Foxx's administration.
"Absolutely a scorecard, when you have senior states attorneys leaving after 12, 20, 25 years because they don't like the policies," Miller said.
He added that he has "never seen morale this low" at the State's Attorney's office, and the low morale is on "every level."
But Miller said he also thought Foxx did some "wonderful things" as State's Attorney.
"Frankly, when you talk about incarcerating people who are charged with nonserious, nonviolent offenses, and they're in the County Jail because they don't have the resources to post even a $100 bond, and they're languishing because they're poor – she stopped that practice," Miller said, "and those people were released and not having to do jail time on cases that may last a year and they may eventually get found not guilty – and they wasted a year of their lives."
"It is admirable to try to rehabilitate their lives - of course," O'Brien added.
But O'Brien also said Foxx overshot on rehabilitation and reform.
"Perhaps she overshot and was trying to do more than that office can do," O'Brien said. "That office cannot go and reform people lives. That's not its job. So overshooting may have been part of her problem."
Mayor Lori Lightfoot – who has often been at odds with Foxx - honored the State's Attorney in a tweet Tuesday:
Foxx's decision not to run for another term paves the way for a new top prosecutor in Cook County after her term expires in December 2024.
Dan Kirk, a former first assistant state's attorney who served as chief of staff to Foxx's predecessor, Anita Alvarez, is among those considering running for Foxx's seat.
"I have not made a decision about entering the race for State's Attorney, but one thing I know for sure is that the next State's Attorney must make public safety their number one priority and work to restore the mission of the office as an unwavering voice for victims of crime. That has become painfully clear for all of us in Cook County," Kirk said in a statement. "Violent crime is an epidemic in Chicago right now and as we consider new leadership for the State's Attorney's Office, we must look to someone who has the strategic experience to hold violent offenders accountable under the law, while prioritizing alternatives to incarceration for younger and non-violent offenders. Justice demands it. Lives are depending on us to get this right."
Bill Conway, who ran against Foxx in the Democratic primary in 2020, and recently was elected alderman of the 34th Ward in Chicago, said he does not plan to run for state's attorney again in 2024.
"I want to commend State's Attorney Foxx on her historic work to reverse wrongful convictions, shine a light on racism in our criminal justice system, and clear low-level cannabis records.
"I'm squarely focused on the job I was just elected to do, which is to help build a stronger and safer city and new 34th Ward, and I couldn't be more excited to be sworn in next month. I am not considering a run for Cook County State's Attorney," he said in a statement.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot – who has often been at odds with Foxx - honored the State's Attorney in a tweet Tuesday:
"I commend and thank Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx for stepping up and serving our City and County through a particularly tough moment in history. I know what it's like being a Black woman in leadership and constantly being judged and evaluated through a different set of standards. I wish SA Foxx and her family the best as she embarks on a new chapter."
Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson released the following statement on Foxx's decision:
"Kim Foxx made history as the first Black woman elected as Cook County state's attorney, and has been instrumental in working to reform the Conviction Bond Office, which has resulted in overturning nearly 200 wrongful convictions, expunging more than 15,000 cannabis crimes, and bringing equity to a criminal justice system that has long disenfranchised people and communities of color. She has led her office with dignity and civility, and as a colleague at the county level, I am grateful for the work that she has accomplished in her two terms. I wish her all the best in her future endeavors."
Insiders expect Foxx - who says she will serve out her full term into next year - is likely to step aside before then so Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle can name a successor who will have a leg up in the 2024 State's Attorney's race.
There is no word on Foxx's future plans.
