Shortly before 9 a.m., Stuart Nudelman hangs up his suit coat and puts on his black robe, the everyday $45 all-cotton model; he also has a silky one made of synthetic material, which cost twice as much and which he uses when he officiates at weddings.
Nudelman, 41, is a judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County. He presides over Branch 46, Misdemeanor Jury Court, where the majesty of the law meets street crime.
He takes a seat at his desk, scans the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, then starts going over the morning`s court call, the cases that will appear before him this day.
They include theft, prostitution, aggravated assault, resisting arrest, battery, ethnic intimidation, criminal sexual abuse and indecent solicitation of a child.
Generally, the details are unremarkable and often banal in their deviance; occasionally, however, certain behavior rises-or sinks-to a level that is so bizarre or disagreeable as to be memorable.
There is such an example on today`s docket. The offender is charged with battery and ethnic intimidation in an incident involving a Yorkshire terrier belonging to him and his wife; call it the Case of the Babied Yorkie. (Ethnic intimidation is a relatively new category of misdemeanor and usually accompanies other charges.)
According to the police report, a husband and wife were dining at a Chicago pancake restaurant; they had their tiny animal, wrapped in a blanket and seated in a high chair, at the table with them.
At a nearby table was a Jewish man of about 70, accompanied by his wife, their son and two acquaintances. After first mistaking the bundled dog for an infant, the old man complained to the manager.
The manager told the couple that pets were not allowed in the restaurant, whereupon the dog`s female owner went to the old man`s table and, using an ethnic slur, shouted at him: ”This dog is probably cleaner than you are, you dirty (deleted)!”
Then she spat in the old man`s face. Moments later, her husband pushed the old man off his chair, then hit and kicked him.
The husband was charged; his wife was not. He has requested a jury trial, set for the afternoon.
After he adjourns court, Nudelman`s work will not be finished. In a sense, he`ll just be starting, for these days he is also a political candidate.
In the evenings and on weekends, he attends meetings at civic clubs, churches, women`s groups, ward organizations, community centers and veterans` lodges throughout the city, asking people to vote for him. If there are as many as three people in an elevator with him, he says, he`ll make a campaign speech.
The case of Stuart Allen Nudelman, judge and candidate, offers insights into how we choose our judiciary in Illinois and why opponents of the system want to change it.
In the primary election on March 15, he will be among 91 candidates in judicial races on Republican and Democratic ballots.
His peers have declared Nudelman an outstanding judge. The Chicago Bar Association and the Chicago Council of Lawyers rated him among their elite
”highly qualified” group. The 21,000-member bar association named 20 candidates in that top category; the 1,000-member council of lawyers gave its highest ranking to only 7.
Seven of the 91 candidates are competing for a single vacancy on the Illinois Appellate Court; the other 84, including Nudelman, are contending for 28 vacancies on the Cook County Circuit Court.
Nudelman is running for the seat he now occupies by virtue of appointment. Under state law even judges who are appointed to fill temporary vacancies, as Nudelman was, must stand for election before the job becomes permanent.
Forty-two candidates received the bar association`s ”not recommended”
rating; the council of lawyers found that 44 candidates either were ”not qualified” or ”not recommended.”
Nudelman has been slated as a candidate by the Democratic Party, which requires 12 years` experience as a lawyer and screening by the bar
association. Nudelman`s two opponents in the primary received ”not recommended” ratings from the bar association; the council of lawyers found one ”qualified” and one ”not qualified.” Neither is a judge.
Critics of the elective system say it`s a terrible way to select judges because most voters don`t have enough information about the candidates to make a considered choice.
They say it`s likely that many voters simply pick the names that are most appealing, letting ethnic and racial biases govern their decisions.
”Because of the lack of information about judicial candidates, some voters may have nothing more to go on than a familiar name. This happened four years ago when a number of able judges were defeated by unqualified opponents,” said Frederick J. Sperling, president of the Chicago Council of Lawyers.
Another complaint is that the elective system forces candidates to solicit campaign funds, mostly from fellow lawyers, which undermines the appearance of judicial independence. A typical campaign costs $15,000 to $35,000.
The critics advocate an appointive procedure, commonly called ”merit selection.” A substantial majority of states, they point out, now have such a system. A plan now before the Illinois General Assembly would have judges nominated by nonpartisan commissions composed of lawyers and nonlawyers. The lawyers would be appointed by the state Supreme Court, the nonlawyers by high- ranking elected officials of each party.
It would seem that the Operation Greylord scandal, which has stained the reputation of the judiciary in Cook County, provides powerful ammunition for the merit selection advocates. So far 11 former judges have been sentenced to prison for bribery, extortion and other crimes.
But privately, many critics aren`t optimistic about the possibility of change. The bench has become a form of patronage for politicians, and party leaders-Democrats and Republicans alike-aren`t inclined to surrender control. –
At 9:30 a.m. the small courtroom where Nudelman presides is packed, as it is at the beginning of each weekday morning. The four benches for spectators are filled, and people are standing in the aisle at the back near the door, making it difficult to enter.
Mixed in anxious proximity are defendants, victims, witnesses and the friends and families of defendants and victims, including children as young as 3.
The absence of windows, the cramped quarters and poor ventilation give the room a stifling, claustrophobic feel. This is a place to have your illusions soiled.
Branch 46 is an integral part of our criminal justice system, an American industry that has not suffered from foreign competition. It`s a system that has been likened to an overburdened assembly line that clanks and wheezes along, its raw material an endless supply of venality, brutality, perversity and ignorance.
–
A week earlier Nudelman had mentioned another ethnic intimidation case, also on today`s agenda, during a telephone call to Rev. George Clements, pastor of Holy Angels Catholic Church on the South Side.
Nudelman was seeking Father Clements` help in a program he is inaugurating in the misdemeanor courts that he oversees.
”Most of the misdemeanors that come before me are first offenses,” he told the priest. ”Most are crimes of stupidity-smoking reefer, petty theft, attempted theft, simple assault, ethnic intimidation. At the most, the people could spend 30 or 60 days in Cook County Jail, and they`re going to come out worse than they went in. Or else they get a year`s supervision or probation, which might as well be nothing.
”These sentences make no sense from a humanitarian or practical point of view. I want to make it possible for some of these guys to return something to society. We call it `Responsibility in Sentencing.` I tell the guy, `All right, you caused a problem; now find a way to solve it.`
”We had a kid in here, a plumber. He was drunk in a bar and punched a police officer. I ordered him to perform 300 hours of public service at a nursing home. That beats 60 days in jail.
”This won`t work with career criminals and `gangbangers` and addicts, but it will work with a lot of people. I`ve got a 21-year-old white guy coming in a week on an ethnic intimidation charge. He chased a black kid with a baseball bat in Gage Park; he threatened to kill him and used racial slurs. He and his lawyer have agreed he`ll plead guilty, and I`m going to sentence him to 200 hours of community service with the NAACP.
”I`m trying to form an umbrella group of organizations and people like you who can provide opportunities for service for these first-time offenders. To put them to work cleaning up buildings or vacant lots, painting porches, whatever. I`m talking to the PTA, the Urban League, Operation PUSH. The times we`ve done this, we`ve had good results.”
–
After graduation from law school in 1971, Nudelman joined the public defend r`s office and served 14 years, handling some of the toughest, high-profile case as a member of the select murder task force.
In 1985 Nudelman applied to the Circuit Court for an associate-judge vacanc . The process entails being interviewed by a panel from the Chicago Bar Associat on and filing an extensive financial and personal history.
Using the bar association ratings (a candidate must be judged at least
”qu lified”; Nudelman was found ”highly qualified”), a committee of sitting judge reduced the applicants from about 200 to 38. A vote by all Circuit Court judges filled the 19 associate judgeships that then were available.
Since being sworn in almost three years ago, he has risen rapidly. In Decem er, 1986, he was named presiding judge of the 10 courts at 1340 S. Michigan, whe e he still sits.
In November, 1987, the state Supreme Court made him a full judge. Last July he was made supervising judge of the 23 misdemeanor criminal courts in the count `s 1st municipal district.
Under state law, judges who reach the bench by appointment must run for ele tion at the earliest opportunity. Once elected they must submit to a retention b llot every six years; each must receive at least one vote more than 60 percent o the total votes cast in his or her race.
According to the chief judge`s office, there are 173 judges, 10 judges who ave been called out of retirement and 166 associate judges who preside over the ounty`s civil and criminal courts. The salary for full judges is $80,599; for as ociates, $75,113.
–
James Kalafut Jr., charged with ethnic intimidation and assault, stands bef re Nudelman with his attorney, Barry Silver. He has pleaded guilty.
”You have the right to hate anyone,” Nudelman tells Kalafut. ”But I can nsist that you don`t hurt anyone with your hatred.”
Nudelman sentences him to 200 hours of community service for the NAACP.
”Y u`re to report to me every month. You`re going to be working with people you thi k you hate. I`m saddened by your appearance here. I blame you, your father, the nvironment you`re brought up in.”
–
In an interview, Sperling, of the Chicago Council of Lawyers, said: ”In a erit-selection process, you seek those who are best qualified to be judges, and ery often the people who might be the best don`t think about being judges. ”What we do now is evaluate candidates who are running, and a number of th m are slated by the two major political parties.
”Judge Nudelman is an example of the excellent people who can emerge from he current system. We interviewed more than two dozen attorneys who had represen ed clients in Judge Nudelman`s court. Everyone-winners and losers-said they rece ved impeccably fair trials, and that`s remarkable. That`s very unusual.
”It`s important for the public to know how dedicated and able some judges re. If the court had been made up of judges like Stuart Nudelman, we wouldn`t ha e had an Operation Greylord.”
Joseph L. Stone, former bar association president and member of the Governo `s Task Force on Judicial Selection, said: ”Not even lawyers know all these fol s who are running for judge in this primary. Some are young people who have been out of law school for only three or four years. You`ve got good candidates runni g against barely qualified candidates.
”Voters who want to do their civic duty will have a devil of a time sortin it out. That`s one reason we need merit selection. Another is that it`s unseeml for candidates to be running around raising money and going to ward meetings. I doesn`t make any sense. What can a candidate say? `I`m going to be honest, fair and I`m able.`
”The parties fight merit selection because they like to reward the party f ithful by making them judges. Both parties have indicated they won`t slate someo e who isn`t qualified. But who are the people running against slated candidates? We`re getting away from party hacks, but now we`re getting unqualified independe ts and unknowns. It`s a bad situation.”
–
In the Case of the Babied Yorkie, Peter Wilcox, the dog`s owner, apologized to the old man and agreed to perform 300 hours of community service.
In the second ethnic intimidation case, scarcely 24 hours would pass before Kalafut was again in trouble, charged with ethnic intimidation, battery and viol tion of the court supervision Nudelman had imposed the day before. Kalafut`s fat er, James Sr., 45, also was charged with ethnic intimidation and battery.
The two were accused of attacking a 27-year-old woman, who was pregnant, an shouting racial slurs at her.
