In September 2017, Cook County Judge Robin Shoffner presided over what appeared to be a routine DUI case, one of the thousands that pass through the county’s criminal courts each year, typically resulting in plea deals. But this case had a different outcome.
At the core of the case was a three-year veteran of the Cicero Police Department who claimed to have encountered more than 100 drunk drivers in his official capacity as an officer. He asserted that the defendant exhibited signs of impairment when he pulled him over late one night as the defendant was driving home from his girlfriend’s apartment, according to a transcript from the hearing. Under oath, the officer stated that he detected the scent of alcohol and that the defendant responded slowly to his questions, had slurred speech, and appeared unsteady when exiting the vehicle.
The defendant’s lawyer argued that the officer’s account was false, and requested the judge dismiss the charges before a potential trial. Shoffner agreed.
“I didn’t believe a word that was coming from his lips,” she remarked about the Cicero police officer, Juan Uribe, who testified in the case, according to the hearing transcript. “This officer was the least credible officer that I have ever heard testify.”
Shoffner’s frank denunciation of the officer highlights what some judges, defense attorneys, and legal advocacy organizations consider an endemic issue in Cook County: police officers subtly distorting facts or providing outright dishonest testimony after swearing an oath to tell the truth on the witness stand.
Officers often enter the courtroom with a significant advantage: they know judges, juries, and prosecutors are more inclined to trust their word than that of a criminal defendant, and they are unlikely to face consequences for not telling the truth.
The result of such false testimony, as asserted by defense attorneys and legal advocates, is not only a blatant disregard for the due process rights of people facing criminal prosecution but also an increased risk of wrongful conviction, an unfortunate category in which Cook County leads the nation.
These are not isolated incidents. Between 2008 and 2022, judges found the testimony of 40 law enforcement officers in Cook County to be incredible or unbelievable, according to an investigation by the Reader. Few faced significant repercussions. Of those found by judges to have provided false or questionable testimony, 31 were Chicago police officers—20 of whom are still active duty members of the force. Collectively they have annual salaries exceeding $2 million. Although a few officers were investigated by the department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs or the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability for potential Rule 14 violations—violations involving making false statements, whether written or oral—none received disciplinary recommendations.
These judicial rulings, known as adverse credibility findings, occurred in county and federal courts. They encompassed a variety of charges, from illegal firearm possession to the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Some revolved around critical issues like whether officers had observed a gun in plain sight before conducting a search, while others focused on seemingly minor details, such as whether a defendant had crossed a white line at an intersection.
Adverse credibility findings do not necessarily constitute judicial rulings that officers deliberately lied or committed perjury. Instead, the findings are recorded on the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office’s Brady list for the purpose of generating so-called disclosure notices. (A Brady list is a list maintained by prosecutors consisting of the names of law enforcement officers whose misconduct undermines their credibility. The practice of creating Brady lists stems from two notable Supreme Court cases, Brady v. Maryland (1963) and Giglio v. United States (1972), that established prosecutors’ duty to hand over to the defense any exculpatory evidence about the defendant and any impeachment information that could be used to challenge the credibility of the prosecution’s witnesses.) According to the office’s official policy, if any officer on that list is called to testify in a criminal case, prosecutors are obligated to inform the defendant about the officer’s previous credibility issues.
Former Cook County state’s attorney Anita Alvarez revealed in 2016 that her office had initiated reviews of some of these cases to consider bringing criminal charges against the officers involved. However, according to court records examined by the Reader, none were ultimately charged with perjury. As for Kim Foxx’s tenure, her office wrote in a statement in response to the Reader‘s inquiries, “We have not opened any investigations regarding perjury based upon testimony given during a hearing where a judge makes an adverse credibility finding.” According to the state’s current perjury statute, there must be evidence that the officer knew the statement they were making was false, which is difficult to prove unless the officer openly admits that their previous statement was false.
“Some of the things defy common sense. Some of it defies the laws of nature,” says a retired Cook County judge regarding testimony he heard from police officers during his nearly two-decade-long career on the bench at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse on 26th and California.
During his tenure, the retired judge, who wished to remain anonymous, encountered a situation where a legal practitioner openly admitted to him that an officer’s courtroom testimony had been fabricated. The attorney attempted to justify it by stating that the officer was “doing a lot of good work in the community.” The retired judge, however, refused to wave off the issue and publicly called out the officer for not telling the truth. He repeated this stance on several other occasions.
In one instance, the retired judge recounts, a police officer testified that he witnessed a drug deal in the gangway between two homes. Unbeknownst to the officer, the judge was well-acquainted with the neighborhood in question and knew that the homes were townhomes with no space for a gangway between them. To prove the officer’s testimony false, the judge ordered a hearing reconvened at the scene of the alleged crime. Before the participants even disembarked from the bus transporting them to the location, prosecutors acknowledged the officer’s account was implausible.
Some legal advocates wonder why judges aren’t more inclined to issue adverse credibility findings, given the recurring tendency of law enforcement officers to provide false testimony on the witness stand.
“It’s really hard to prove something that is so in the shadows and that people don’t talk about openly,” Johnson says. Nevertheless, “the police union does have power and can encourage people to vote a certain way.”
There are some recent examples in which cops were prosecuted, though it’s few and far between and often only when there’s considerable public attention on a case. Perhaps the most notorious and prominent examples of that willingness to make false statements are ex-Chicago police commander Jon Burge, who was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in 2010 in federal court for testifying falsely about his role in torturing people over the course of decades, from the 1970s through the early 1990s, and the three CPD officers charged in 2017 for falsifying police reports in an attempted cover-up of Jason Van Dyke’s 2014 killing of Laquan McDonald. Chicago police officers have also faced perjury charges in less high-profile cases, such as Jeffrey Kriv, who stands accused of lying under oath 44 times to avoid paying dozens of traffic-related tickets.
But considering the substantial volume of criminal cases heard in Cook County each year, advocates argue the number of adverse credibility findings is remarkably low. Between 2011 and 2016, the most recent years for which county data is publicly available, prosecutors filed more than 225,000 felony cases, and judges conducted more than 15,000 bench trials. Among the latter, judges acquitted defendants in more than 6,000 cases. However, only a minuscule fraction—43 cases—resulted in adverse credibility findings.
Judges may hesitate to follow the retired judge’s example for several reasons. Some believe it’s better to remain silent to avoid appearing biased, according to the retired judge. Instead, when they find an officer’s testimony incredible, they may choose the safe route: granting a defendant’s motion to toss out evidence or finding the defendant not guilty in a bench trial without explicitly pointing out the officer’s questionable testimony.
By making adverse credibility findings, judges risk setting themselves up for negative interactions with police officers or state’s attorneys they need to make their courtrooms run, says Naomi Johnson, director of research and program management at the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts.
The retired judge agrees this was the case. He says that, for his perceived activism from the bench, prosecutors had taken cases away from him, cops had complained to him outside the courtroom, and his fellow judges even launched a judicial inquiry against him.
Additionally, judges with backgrounds in law enforcement or from prosecutor’s offices may have a natural tendency to believe and favor police officers, even when a defendant’s testimony contradicts theirs. This is often due to a “teammate effect,” Johnson says, where judges see themselves as part of the same team as law enforcement.
Another reason judges may hesitate to issue adverse credibility findings is the potential impact on an officer’s career. Such findings can prevent officers from testifying in future hearings, which can be a significant career setback if the officer is also pulled from the street and assigned to desk duty.
Lastly, judges in elected positions may be reluctant to cross police officers for electoral reasons, as law enforcement officers constitute an important voting bloc.
The fear of electoral blowback is not unfounded. Although there is no record of Chicago’s Fraternal Order of the Police Lodge 7, the largest law enforcement union in Cook County, supporting Shoffner’s challenger, James Shapiro, in the 2018 judicial election’s primary, she lost by more than 20 percentage points one year after issuing an adverse credibility finding, a rare occurrence among Cook County judges who usually retain their positions. (In 2022, for example, all Cook County judges up for retention won another term in office, and in 2020 one judge lost her retention bid.)
Shoffner was later considered for appointment as an associate judge but was not selected for that position either, and is now a member of the Illinois Prisoner Review Board. She declined the Reader’s request for an interview and directed questions regarding her judicial tenure to Cook County chief judge Timothy Evans’s office.
“It’s really hard to prove something that is so in the shadows and that people don’t talk about openly,” Johnson says. Nevertheless, “the police union does have power and can encourage people to vote a certain way.”
Despite these challenges, the retired judge believes judges have a responsibility to establish a clear record of their reasoning when making judicial rulings, even if it means facing potential backlash.
“I felt that was a part of my mission: inform and enlighten,” he says.
The number of adverse credibility findings has varied over the years. In several recent years, zero such findings were made. But judges made 31 findings in the seven years since 2015, the same year body-worn cameras were first piloted by CPD. This suggests there may be a connection between the advent and widespread adoption of body-worn cameras and dashcams and the steep rise in Cook County judges willing to openly call into question the credibility of officers. Indeed, a pair of cases, argued by the same defense attorney, highlight their importance for judges making these rulings.
“In my opinion, [the] first time might be a coincidence; [the] second time is not a coincidence.”
In June 2019, Chicago police officers Constantino Martinez, Clara Cinta, and Katie Blocker were called to testify about their arrest of Jermayne Akons. The three cops detained him in 2018 after they allegedly saw Akons and five other Black men standing outside an SUV while playing loud music and drinking alcohol, behavior the officers described in court as loitering.
As they approached, the officers said they saw all six men quickly enter the SUV. Blocker, who joined CPD in February 2015, said she directly observed Akons take out a gun and put it under the vehicle’s front passenger seat. The officers recovered the gun after ordering the men out of the SUV and searching it. Akons, who had no prior felony convictions, was charged with aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, according to court records.
Matthew Kaplan, an experienced criminal defense attorney who represented Akons, argued before the court that the officers lacked probable cause to search the vehicle and sought to have the gun thrown out as evidence ahead of a trial.
The June 2019 hearing took place in Judge Steven Watkins’s courtroom and was the kind that often predicts a defendant’s fate. The issue at hand was whether the officers had the authority to conduct a search and make an arrest. (Officers frequently justify their actions by claiming they see evidence—such as drugs or a gun, as in this case—in plain sight.) If the defendant prevails, prosecutors are likely to drop the charges due to a lack of usable evidence. Conversely, if the defendant loses, they are more inclined to consider a plea bargain lest they face a potential guilty verdict at trial and a lengthier prison sentence.
“Unless this is Barnum and Bailey, there’s no way [six] grown, rather large Black people could all pack into a car at one time in the matter of five seconds,” Kaplan recalls in an interview about the case.
A transcript from the hearing shows he directed the court to examine video evidence taken from the officers’ body-worn and dashboard cameras that contradicted the officers’ sworn testimony.
Watkins sided with Kaplan and threw out the evidence a little over a month later.
“The detention of this defendant without a reasonable articulable suspicion that he had committed a crime is simply not there. He’s simply in a car, initially, outside of a car, committing no crime whatsoever,” Watkins said, according to the hearing transcript, explaining his reasoning.
“It was Blocker who claims that she saw the defendant reach down with a gun in his hand and place it under the seat,” he continued. “From the way it was testified to and described as well as to the video, I don’t find that credible or believable either.”
Watkins issued adverse credibility findings against all three officers, landing them a spot on the state’s attorney’s office’s Brady list. Prosecutors soon dropped the case against Akons.
Incredibly, a year later, Kaplan represented a different client, Artez Jackson, who was arrested by Cinta and Blocker with a bag of ecstasy, some methamphetamine, and a gun in his possession. Prosecutors charged Jackson with two Class X offenses, the most serious felony charge, which, because of a prior conviction, carried a mandatory sentence of natural life in prison if he were found guilty.
Kaplan didn’t make the connection between Jackson’s case and Akons’s at first. But, in 2022, when he filed a motion that would’ve forced the two officers to appear in court, prosecutors finally turned over a disclosure notice that triggered his memory.
“I start paging through it, and then that set the bells off in my head,” Kaplan says. “These are the same officers from that credibility finding, and I was the attorney that did the other one . . . As soon as I filed the motion and they gave me the notice of disclosure, I got them to come down.”
After initially offering Jackson 18 years in exchange for a guilty plea, prosecutors lowered their offer to 12 years, then to eight, and finally to six years at 50 percent time served, according to Kaplan, which would’ve allowed Jackson to be immediately released for the time he’d spent in jail before trial.
When Kaplan got access to the body camera footage from the arrest and watched it, he realized how weak the state’s case truly was, beyond even the past credibility issues of the arresting officers. Cinta and Blocker had again used a false pretext to search a vehicle. The two stopped Jackson after they said they observed him driving back and forth in two opposite directions. When they asked him about why he did so, Jackson said he was returning from his girlfriend’s house, a claim they told him they didn’t believe. They ran his license, which was valid, according to Kaplan, and in the process turned up no outstanding warrants.
It was then that the footage showed Blocker looking at Cinta and, according to Kaplan, said to her partner, with a recognizable wink and head gesture, “You smell weed, don’t you?” Never before in the tape had they said they smelled marijuana, Kaplan says. And yet, in the arrest report, Cinta wrote that they smelled cannabis when they first approached Jackson’s SUV and cited the odor as their basis for searching his vehicle.
Kaplan thinks if the officers had testified, he might not have had a hard time convincing a judge to find the officers incredible for a second time. But he never got the chance. Jackson took the deal on the table and pleaded guilty to felony possession of a firearm.
“These two officers should be removed from the department,” Kaplan says. “In my opinion, [the] first time might be a coincidence; [the] second time is not a coincidence.”
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