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 Cook County residents wrongfully convicted or accused of a
crime will no longer have to pay just to remove the blot on their name.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed Senate Bill 482 into law Aug. 9, which renews a pilot
program in Cook County that waives the $120 fee required to expunge or seal
criminal records for those who have been wrongfully convicted of a crime. The
bill earned strong bipartisan support in the Statehouse, sailing unanimously
through both the Illinois Senate and House of Representatives.
The new law, carried through the General Assembly by state Sen. Jacqueline
Collins, D-Chicago, and state Rep. Arthur Turner, D-Chicago, applies to those
who have either been acquitted, released from incarceration without charges or
had their charges dismissed, reversed, or vacated.
 The fee waiver program is effective immediately and extends through Dec. 31,
2020. The pilot originally ran in Cook County from January 2017 to Jan. 1, 2019.
Nearly 20% of arrestees in Cook County jail ultimately have their charges
dropped, according to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s office. And Cook County led
the nation in exonerations of wrongfully incarcerated residents in 2013 and 2014
reports by the National Registry of Exonerations, or NRE.
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NRE’s database shows more than 200 inmates have
been exonerated in Cook County since 2011. The most commonly cited
factors contributing to the wrongful incarceration of those
individuals are “perjury or false accusation” and “official
misconduct.” In NRE’s 2014 report, Cook County topped the nation in
false confessions.
In 2019 alone, nearly 20 people have so far been exonerated in Cook
County. James Gibson, who was convicted in 1991, served the longest
sentence among those exonerated this year. Gibson was sentenced to
life without parole on two counts of first-degree murder.
A criminal record can haunt someone long after they’ve paid their
debt to society – and often for life. But for a person carrying that
burden due to a wrongful arrest or conviction, paying a fee to
restore his or her name is another unjust penalty. Correcting an
error of the criminal justice system should not require a fee paid
by the victim of that error.
Whether due to mistakes or misconduct, wrongful arrests are not
limited to one county, and they will not disappear when the waiver
program is set to expire in 2021. Illinois leaders should make these
reforms permanent, and expand them beyond just Cook County.
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