A Question of Residence

Questions of residence: Records raise questions about residences of some subcircuit judges

By Medill Watchdog and WGN Investigates

When Cook County assistant public defender Beatriz Santiago ran for Cook County judge last year, there were reasons to question just where she lived.

Weeks before she began to circulate nominating petitions, Santiago changed her address from the house she owned – which was outside the subcircuit in which she was running – to her parents’ two-flat house inside the subcircuit.

Santiago took her clothing and her dogs, but left behind her furniture, her big screen television and the Direct TV connection, according to testimony at a hearing on whether Santiago really had moved into the subcircuit, as she claimed. She moved back in, according to her testimony, to live with her parents; sister Leticia Santiago, and Leticia’s daughter Isabella; brother Luis Santiago, his wife and their three children; and brother Jose Santiago. Adopted brother Joel Vazquez also lived there when Beatriz Santiago first moved in, she testified.

At the end of a hearing over an opponent’s challenge to her residency, a hearing officer wrote: “There are a number of facts regarding the Candidate’s residency that are not that entirely plausible.” But, the hearing officer ruled, there also was not conclusive proof Santiago was lying about her residence, and therefore she was left on the ballot.

Read the full ruling in the case here.

Santiago is one of several subcircuit judges whose housing arrangements raised questions in a joint investigation by Medill Watchdog and WGN Investigates. The review found repeated instances where judges owned homes that were outside the subcircuit altogether, or had moved at some point outside the subcircuit from which they were elected.

The review also found records that some judges owned more than one house that held a homeowner exemption – a status that permits reduced property taxes to homeowners for their primary residence.

Santiago’s case stood out for a simple reason: the residence issue had been reviewed and subjected to outside examination.

More commonly, the Medill Watchdog/WGN Investigates probe found, nobody appears to be watching whether judges are honoring the residence laws. And with an increasing number of laws enacted that protect records of judges from scrutiny – their voter registration, their car registration, their addresses on election board candidate forms and on deeds are among the records that by law can be redacted from public view – the absence of an official tasked with monitoring their reports gains heightened significance.

The state Judicial Inquiry Board has the power to investigate conduct by judges that violates judicial ethical canons, including conduct that can bring the judiciary into disrepute. But that board tends to react to complaints and public reports, not to initiate investigations on its own.

The board did once act against a Cook County judge over the issue of residence. In 2004, Francis X. Golniewicz III, removed from office after an Inquiry Board investigation that began over Golniewicz’s conduct in the courtroom in a series of cases, including one in which he referred to a black defendant as “boy.”

The board later amended its case to add charges that Golniewicz had falsely claimed to be living in Chicago’s 10th subcircuit, on the Northwest side. The board established that was his parents’ home, and that he and his wife lived in west suburban Riverside. The board concluded that Golniewicz had acted to bring the judiciary into disrepute both by his false claims of residence and by his conduct in the courtroom, leading to his removal from office.

But that case stands as the exception.

And that leaves a system in which subcircuit scrutiny does not routinely occur – though legal observers acknowledge the problems. “The issue of residency as we all know is such an elusive thing,” said former U.S. attorney Anton Valukas. “We have had political people who claim to live in a particular community, and yet you find you have their magnificent house in some other community.” The idea of residency, he added, “seems to me to be a slippery slope.”

The question of residency has been an issue since the subcircuits were created by the legislature in 1991 to bring more diversity to the bench. Legislators spoke of geographic diversity, and the benefits to neighborhoods of having judges living in the community.

But controversy erupted over whether judges, initially elected by a subcircuit, could move from that subcircuit, and when.

The original law stated that a judge elected from a subcircuit “shall continue to reside in that subcircuit as long as he or she holds that office.” But in 2006 attorney general Lisa Madigan issued an opinion that said the legislature had gone too far. Legislators could not require subcircuit judges to remain in their subcircuits after being in office six years and winning countywide retention election.

The legislature the next year enacted another law, responding to Madigan’s opinion by spelling out that judges elected after 2008 had to maintain voter registration in their subcircuits in order to be eligible to run for retention.

In the case of Santiago, in the months before public records show she declared her candidacy, she changed her voter registration and driver’s license to the home where her parents and the families of her siblings lived. She moved, she testified, to care for her father who was fighting the early stages of Parkinson’s disease.

But after hearing testimony about whether Santiago really lived there, hearing officer Barbara Goodman noted reasons to doubt her story. Santiago, the hearing officer’s report states, “provided no testimony regarding a sudden or even gradual change in his condition necessitating her care” which had been diagnosed in 2010 or early 2011. The report goes on: “In fact, candidate conceded that she worked during the weekdays and was often out at campaign functions, so it is unlikely that she has the time to provide the care she claims that is needed as a result of her father’s disease.”

Furthermore, while Santiago testified she rented the house she owned to an adopted brother for $500 in cash each month, the brother testified that he was paying her $600 a month in rent. There were no records to support the rent payments, Santiago said, because she did not deposit the rent money; she spent it.

Still, hearing officer Goodman wrote, the burden was on the challenger to prove that Santiago did not live in the subcircuit. “Regardless of the inconsistencies and improbabilities created by the Candidate’s testimony,” her opinion states, “the Objector’s evidence was not sufficient to conclusively establish that the Candidate does not reside” at her parents’ home.

That ruling cleared the way for Santiago to take her seat on the bench. In August, the investigation by Medill Watchdog and WGN Investigates found, Santiago took out a new mortgage on her property outside the subcircuit for $184,500. One of the conditions of the mortgage: That the house would be her primary residence, absent an agreement in writing to the contrary by the lender. No such agreement was filed in the public record.

If Santiago did live in the house she owned, as the refinance mortgage suggests, that would seem to violate the legislation requiring that she remain in the subcircuit until she runs for retention.

Santiago did not return telephone calls nor written requests for clarification about the conflict.

Another sixth subcircuit judge , Gloria Chevere, was elected despite negative evaluations from the various bar association groups after refusing to submit to their evaluation process when she first ran in 2006.

Chevere and her husband, Rafael Flores, have owned a house in the 10th subcircuit for more than 20 years. When Chevere decided to run, records show that her husband continued to list his address at the house, while Chevere listed her address in a home in the sixth subcircuit owned by another woman.

After the primary election but before the 2006 general election, Chevere purchased a condominium inside the sixth subcircuit.

But she also continued to co-own the house she and her husband had lived in outside the subcircuit. And in 2009, the two filed for a new mortgage line of credit for that house. It, too, bore the standard clause requiring the recipient to live in the house absent written approval to the contrary.

County assessor records show homestead exemptions were granted simultaneously for the house outside Chevere’s subcircuit – which was jointly owned by Chevere and her husband, according to records – between 2008 and 2012. And a homestead exemption also was granted on the condominium owned by Chevere in 2011 and 2012.

Chevere was willing to offer only a brief comment. She said she kept her voter registration in the subcircuit, and moved only after getting clearance to do so. She declined to elaborate. 

On the far southwest side of Chicago, Judge Patrick J. Sherlock was first elected to the Cook County Circuit Court in 2008 from the subcircuit that included the southwest Chicago neighborhood where he and his wife had long lived.

But Sherlock’s residence became an issue in 2011 when he aspired for a seat on the state appeals court and filed as a candidate for three different open appellate seats.

Challengers in two of the races contended that Sherlock had falsely listed his address in the southwest neighborhood on forms he filed with the state.

City records show the Sherlocks sold their house in August 2012, after it was on the market for several months. The issue was where the judge lived from the time the house first became vacant.

City records show that Sherlock’s wife and a son registered to vote at a Gold Coast condominium address, outside the district.

The challenge was never resolved; Sherlock withdrew his candidacy from the appellate contests in which his residence had become an issue. Sherlock lost the primary race for the third seat, and remains a Circuit Court judge.

In October 2012, after the primary defeat, Sherlock and his wife jointly bought a small property in Oaklawn, which is in his subcircuit. The recorded deed for the property states that tax bills should be sent to Patrick Sherlock, at the Gold Coast address.

The residency issue raises two issues in the case of Sherlock: If he was not living in his old southwest neighborhood at the time he filed his candidacy, then the forms would be incorrectly completed. And a move to the Gold Coast would put him outside the subcircuit from which he serves as judge.

Sherlock failed to respond to repeated requests for an interview.

see partner WGN Investigates video: http://wgntv.com/2013/12/04/judging-the-judges-knock-knock-your-honor-are-you-illegally-living-here/

And see final segment tomorrow at 9 p.m. CST  on WGN-TV, 9:30 right here!