The Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board, in an unprecedented action, Friday recommended that Cook County Circuit Judge Robert J. Dempsey be removed from office for ”gross misconduct” involving financial arrangements he allegedly had with attorneys who appeared before him.
Dempsey tried to resign Thursday, the day before the charges became public. Chief Justice William G. Clark of the Illinois Supreme Court has declined to accept his resignation, and the chairman of the Judicial Inquiry Board said it would oppose Dempsey`s resignation.
The board is trying to block Dempsey`s resignation so that Dempsey can be stripped of his judgeship if the Illinois Courts Commission finds, after a public hearing, that the charges against him have been proven.
Dempsey`s attorney, George Murtaugh, said Friday that the Judicial Inquiry Board`s ”attempt to block his resignation is merely an action taken so they can drag Judge Dempsey`s name through the mud.”
The board is charging that Dempsey while on the bench received regular payments from a lawyer who appeared before him and with whom he had a longstanding business arrangement; that Dempsey owned property with other lawyers who appeared before him; and that Dempsey failed to withdraw from cases involving these lawyers or warn the opposing lawyers of his involvement. The complaint says Dempsey once ruled on a case involving his own property and received a tax refund.
Robert P. Cummins, chairman of the Judicial Inquiry Board, said this was the first time since the board was established by the 1970 Illinois Constitution that the board has recommended a punishment for a judge. Previously, the board has only filed charges and allowed the Illinois Courts Commission to determine the punishment.
Cummins said the board chose to recommend that Dempsey be removed from the bench because of ”the seriousness of the allegations.”
The Judicial Inquiry Board investigates alleged judicial misconduct, including conduct that may not be illegal but is in violation of state judicial standards. The Illinois Courts Commission has the power to censure judges, suspend them or remove them from the bench.
Dempsey has been on the bench since 1964, starting as a magistrate. In 1971, he became an associate judge and, in 1976, a full Circuit Court judge.
In recent years, he has been assigned to the County Division of Circuit Court and primarily has heard cases regarding property taxes.
He has served, in effect, as the court of appeals for property owners seeking to get property assessments lowered if they had been unsuccessful in challenging their assessments before the Cook County Board of (Tax) Appeals.
The formal complaint against Dempsey has four counts.
According to the first count, from 1964 until 1980 Dempsey had a fee-splitting arrangement with Pierce Shannon, then an attorney representing property owners who wanted to get their assessments lowered.
The complaint says the arrangement began while Dempsey was still a lawyer in private practice after he referred four Loop clients to Shannon ”for legal work on personal property tax matters.”
In return for the client referrals, Shannon gave Dempsey half the fees he earned from those clients, according to the complaint. Some form of fee splitting is a common practice among lawyers when one gives business to another.
However, the complaint says that Shannon continued to represent those four clients in property tax matters for many years, and Shannon continued to give Dempsey 50 percent of the latest fees long after Dempsey became a judge. Between 1976 and 1980, Dempsey received at least $5,000 from Shannon this way, said the complaint. The complaint originally said $50,000, but was later corrected.
Illinois Supreme Court rules for judges state, ” `A judge should not accept gifts or favors from . . . lawyers practicing before him,` ” according to the complaint.
Shannon pleaded guilty in 1981 to mail fraud and racketeering for bribing employees of the Board of (Tax) Appeals to obtain assessment reductions for his clients. He was sentenced to a year in prison and is no longer a lawyer.
The second count of the complaint against Dempsey says that in 1979, he became part owner of property at 2949 N. Fairfield Ave. along with attorney Victor Peters.
While Dempsey was part owner of the property, he heard a case involving the taxes on it and on April 8, 1981, entered an order that resulted in a property tax refund for himself, the complaint says.
Count two also says Dempsey bought several other pieces of property over the years together with Peters and another attorney, Peter Alexander. They bought these parcels in scavenger sales in which the property is sold for back taxes.
The complaint says that Dempsey later was responsible for assigning court cases concerning the deeds to these parcels of land to various judges, but Dempsey never disclosed that he was a partial owner of the property.
Count three says Dempsey continued to hear cases involving attorneys Shannon, Peters, and Alexander even though he was also in business with them, and he also failed to inform the opposing lawyers of this fact. Count three says Dempsey also owned property secretly in conjunction with yet another lawyer who practiced before him, identified as Dewey Suster.
Alexander was also convicted in the Board of (Tax) Appeals bribery scandal.
Count four says that Dempsey earned a $10,000 profit in 1980 by selling property he owned at 1006 N. Wells St. along with Peters and Alexander, but that he failed to report this profit on his state or federal income tax forms or on his statement of economic interests filed each year with the administrative office of the Illinois courts.
Failure to report income on tax returns could be a criminal charge, but there was no indication Friday that criminal charges would be made against Dempsey. Scott Turow, the assistant U.S. attorney who led the prosecution of the bribery scandal in the Cook County Board of (Tax) Appeals a few years ago, declined to comment when asked if the U.S. attorney`s office was investigating Dempsey.
The Judicial Inquiry Board`s common practice in recent years, especially during the Operation Greylord investigation of court corruption in Cook County, has been to postpone disciplinary action against judges if there was a chance they would face federal criminal charges or until the federal charges were heard in a trial.
