Lawyers group wants Judge Riley gone

By Abdon M. Pallasch
Special to the Daily Southtown
Published October 6, 2006

Cook County Circuit Judge Ronald Riley, the presiding judge at the Markham courthouse, should be voted off the bench next month, a lawyers group said Thursday.

The Chicago Council of Lawyers said Riley got his disabled daughter a job in the courthouse so he could stop paying child support, citing charges that his wife made in a divorce case.

Riley could not be reached for comment.

The council found 15 of the 70 judges up for retention next month to be not qualified, including Robert Kowalski, who has made "offensive remarks in open court based on gender and national origin -- about litigants, court employees and other judges," the council said in its evaluation of him.

Kowalski has been a judge for 18 years, serving most of that time in the courthouse in Rolling Meadows.

And the Chicago Council of Lawyers was not alone in its dim view of Kowalski's judicial ability.

Among the 10 attorney organizations evaluating the 70 judicial candidates ahead of the Nov. 7 election, there was unanimity regarding 55 of them -- 54 should be retained, and Kowalski, with his political incorrectness and temper problems, should be kicked off.

Of the other 15 judges, nine of the 10 groups found 12 qualified and split on the others. The Council of Lawyers also found four judges "highly qualified" for retention: Appellate Justice Warren Wolfson and circuit court judges Joseph Urso, James Epstein and Stuart Palmer.

Judges must get 60 percent "yes" votes every six years to keep their seats.

Kowalski made waves by admonishing Mount Prospect and other suburban police departments not to target Hispanics for arrest. He also angered some prosecutors and police by tossing out "driving without a license" charges against people who carried foreign driver's licenses.

Many lawyers interviewed Thursday said they had never heard Kowalski use inappropriate or intemperate language in court, but some said he did so. Kowalski called Italian-Americans "tomato pickers" and told prosecutors and defense attorneys when he thought women appearing in his court were good-looking, some said.

"They won't tell me who made the comments or what the comments are," Kowalski said, denying making any offensive remarks against women or ethnic groups. He said he quit the evaluation process halfway through when he realized the bar groups were "biased" against him, relying on a lawyer who was mad at him.

Kowalski and his fans say the groups are targeting the wrong judge.

"Whoever said this has not been out to (Kowalski's courtroom) in a while," recently retired Judge Janice Bierman said. "He was the one that led the way in Mount Prospect against people profiling Hispanics. For them to say he was racist or made racist remarks... he was the hardest worker in the district."

Leaders of the lawyers' organizations said their evaluations of the judges were made after thousands of hours of research that involved interviews with hundreds of lawyers.

Judges Cynthia Brim and Amanda Toney fared second-worst in the ratings after Kowalski. Brim was found unqualified by five bar groups and Toney by four.

The city's largest lawyers' group, the Chicago Bar Association, releases its judicial ratings next week.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Sun Times