Illinois’ First District Appellate Court ruled Wednesday that de facto life sentences for those with intellectual disabilities is a violation of the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Illinois proportionate penalties clause.

The appellate panel found that a 50-year sentence handed down to Illinois resident William Coty, who had been convicted of predatory criminal sexual assault of a minor in 2004, was too harsh. Because Coty had a prior conviction for aggravated criminal sexual assault, a Cook County trial court had no choice but to sentence him to mandatory natural life in prison without the possibility of parole. After an appeal, the sentence was shortened to 50 years, which was still a de facto life sentence for the 58-year-old Coty.

But on this new appeal, the First District Court was asked for the first time to examine whether a de facto life sentence was imposed in a manner inconsistent with the 8th Amendment and the state’s proportionate penalties clause. The panel found that those with intellectual disabilities should be treated the same in sentencing as juveniles.

“Intellectually disabled individuals, just like juveniles, are less culpable, where the deficiencies associated with intellectual disability diminish their personal culpability,” wrote Justice James Fitzgerald Smith, who delivered the opinion for the panel.

The justices also pointed to other challenges defendants with intellectual disabilities face when put into a court system that normally deals with typically functioning adults.  

“Additional risks accompanying the unique characteristics of the intellectually disabled are the possibility that they will unwittingly confess to crimes they did not commit, their lesser ability to give their counsel meaningful assistance, and the fact that they are typically poor witnesses, and their demeanor may create an unwarranted impression of lack of remorse for their crimes,” the opinion said.

The justices said they looked to contemporary understandings of what qualifies as “cruel and unusual punishment,” but said the standards were difficult to pin down. However, they said, it’s clear that they are ever-evolving, and that it’s important to look at what might “shock the moral sense of the community.”

“Accordingly, as of today, our community’s standards of decency appear to have evolved to prohibit the imposition of de jure and de facto mandatory and discretionary life sentences for juveniles, where procedurally the court fails to consider the attendant characteristics of youth,” the panel wrote.

While cases involving those with intellectual disabilities are rare, juvenile sentencing has been a recent issue in Illinois. In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling striking down the sentences of juveniles who were given life without parole. A subsequent Illinois Supreme Court ruling gave inmates the chance for resentencing hearings, though many of those juveniles still sit behind bars waiting for their court dates.

Sentencing reform has not yet made a major appearance in the Attorney General race, but both State Sen. Kwame Raoul (D-Chicago) and Republican Erika Harold are expected to push the issue. Raoul is a former Cook County prosecutor and has served as the vice chair of the Illinois Sentencing Policy Advisory Council and on the Illinois State Commission on Criminal Justice and Sentencing Reform.

In an email Wednesday, Raoul spokeswoman Aviva Bowen pointed to more than a dozen bills the Democrat has sponsored dealing with sentencing reform and juvenile justice.

"Influenced by his experience as a prosecutor and his concern for neighborhoods plagued by crime and mass incarceration, Kwame has made criminal justice reform a focus of his career — and his volume of work is expansive," she said.

Harold has long been involved in prison ministry, and serves on the national board of directors for the faith-based organization Prison Fellowship. A Harold spokesman described the Republican as "very passionate" about sentencing reform.

Democrats pushing a bill that would prohibit employers from asking about a job candidate’s previous salary finally sent the legislation to the governor’s desk on Wednesday. Meanwhile, an LGBT-focused independent expenditure committee filed paperwork with the Illinois State Board of Elections.

An Illinois House panel on Tuesday heard from education officials, parents and technologists at a committee hearing set up in response to a data breach at Chicago Public Schools earlier this summer. Meanwhile, Gov. Bruce Rauner signed a new bill aimed at more detailed background checks on Lyft and Uber drivers.

ProPublica Illinois reporter Mick Dumke looks at the state’s political issues and personalities in this occasional column.



Amanda Biela was campaigning door to door in north suburban Glenview one afternoon last week when she stopped to talk with a senior watering his front lawn.

“I’m running for 15th District state rep,” Biela told him, “and I’m basically running against the Madigan machine.”

Biela explained that she’s challenging incumbent Rep. John D’Amico, which means she’s also taking on his ally Michael Madigan, the long-serving state House Speaker and Democratic Party leader. Biela, a former Chicago Public Schools teacher and mother of three, added that her top priority is lowering property taxes.

She didn’t mention that she’s a Republican. Why bring it up right away in a Democrat-dominated district?

It didn’t matter. The man remained focused on his grass. “All politicians are crooks,” he told Biela.

She smiled and went with it. “That’s why I’m running!” She offered him a flier. “Please, just think about it in November.”

The man accepted the flier, glanced at it, and stuffed it into the mailbox on this porch. Then he went back to his lawn.

Voters are angry — some to the point that they’ve tuned out politics — as I saw when I walked a few neighborhoods with Biela recently.

In most places, that could spell doom for an entrenched incumbent. But in the 15th District, made up of parts of the city’s Northwest Side and adjacent suburbs, Democratic Party insiders have triumphed for years, often without viable challengers. It’s a story that’s repeated in districts around Chicago every election cycle.

To add to her challenge, Biela has been forced to navigate a civil war within her own party as she tries to line up resources for a serious campaign.

In short, her race offers a snapshot of the Democratic political dynasties, Republican infighting and incompetence, and influence of big campaign money that have long defined Illinois and frustrated its voters.

And yet Biela argues, “I think this district can be flipped.”

It would be a huge upset. She’s taking on not just an incumbent with clout but a history of family and party domination.

D’Amico took office in 2004, but members of his family have run Chicago’s 39th Ward, which makes up a large chunk of the 15th District, for more than a half century. His grandfather, Anthony Laurino, became the ward’s alderman in 1965. When Laurino stepped down after 29 years in office, his daughter, Margaret Laurino— D’Amico’s aunt — succeeded him. She’s now been in office for 24 years.

In 1995, the elder Laurino was indicted by federal prosecutors for allegedly helping family members and allies get no-show city jobs. He died before his case was resolved, but both of D’Amico’s parents were convicted and sentenced to prison for their roles in the ghost payrolling system.

D’Amico is paid about $78,000 a year as a member of the Illinois House, but that’s his part-time job. He’s worked for the City of Chicago since 1981, and now makes about $107,000 a year as an assistant district superintendent in the water department, according to city payroll records.

Though he’s well aware Madigan is deeply unpopular across much of Illinois — and widely blamed for the state’s dire financial condition — D’Amico remains a steadfast ally, arguing the speaker has fended off a right-wing push by Gov. Bruce Rauner, a relentless Madigan critic.

Since taking office, D’Amico has only faced three election opponents. He beat them all by at least 19 points. His top campaign donor is Democratic Majority, a political action committee Madigan controls.

D’Amico rejects Biela’s charge that he’s a machine guy in lockstep with the speaker. He told me he’s repeatedly voted for property tax relief, as well as for investments in schools, parks and libraries.

“My campaign is based on volunteers and people based in the communities — people who believe in what I believe in,” he said.

Clearly, a lot would have to go Biela’s way for her to win. It doesn’t help that Republicans don’t have a functioning campaign operation in Chicago or Cook County.

Biela was recruited to run last year by fellow Republicans in the Northwest Side GOP Club, a group trying to build a presence in that corner of the city and nearby suburbs — including by playing off fears of an affordable housing proposal.

The Illinois Opportunity Project, a nonprofit organization that advocates for smaller government and limits on union rights, stepped in to pay for Biela’s campaign legal fees, phone banking and consulting, records show.

But Biela said she was uncomfortable with how closely the IOP people and their ally Dan Proft, a well-known conservative activist, wanted to control her message.

Proft and IOP leaders have waged political war on Rauner and other Republicans they believe have betrayed the right on abortion, among other issues. During the primaries last winter, Proft served as an adviser to Rauner’s opponent, state Rep. Jeanne Ives, while a super PAC he runs, Liberty Principles, backed a challenge against House Republican Leader Jim Durkin. Proft’s candidates lost both races.

But even after the primaries, Biela said Proft told her she couldn’t work with Durkin or his House Republican Organization, saying, “It’s black or white — you have to pick a team.”

The conversation left her wondering how the GOP could beat Madigan and the Democrats if its factions are fighting with each other.

Proft didn’t dispute Biela’s account.

“We support candidates committed to the economic liberty policy agenda who want to bring policy revolution to Springfield,” he said in an email. “The Rauner-financed House Republicans support surrender Republicans who raise taxes and fold in with Chicago Democrat Socialists and their big government, cultural Marxist, status quo agenda. The two visions are mutually exclusive.”

Proft characterized Biela as naive. “Unfortunately, like so many first-time candidates, Amanda doesn’t know what she doesn’t know,” he said. “Amanda will lose badly.”

After their conversation, Biela said, she broke with Proft and began working with the House Republican Organization, which has helped her with promotional materials and volunteers. In June, Durkin’s campaign fund transferred $250 to Biela’s.

That’s not much money. Even after Rauner’s campaign gave the House Republican Organization $2 million a few weeks ago — he’s the group’s top financial backer — the HRO has to focus on districts that the GOP might be able to take from Democrats. Biela, who’s hoping for more support, said she has to prove her district is one of them.

She also knows she can’t afford to blanket the district with mailings or put ads on TV, as more flush campaigns are able to do. At the end of June, when quarterly reports were last filed, her campaign fund had about $6,100 on hand. D’Amico’s had $369,000, much of it from Madigan’s organizations and various unions.

In spite of the financial and organizational mismatch, Beila argues she could pull off an upset. Biela said a lot of people, including some Democrats, are tired of being overtaxed and ruled by political families like D’Amico’s and Madigan’s. So she’s walking the district and talking about the machine and high taxes — and mostly avoiding subjects like abortion, immigration and President Trump.

“I talk about things that have an appeal to everyone,” she said.

She’s often rebuffed — sometimes even before she speaks. But at some homes she’s been greeted with enthusiasm. When Glenview resident Christopher Kellogg opened his door last week, Biela made her usual declaration that she was taking on the Madigan machine.

“Oh, thank God,” Kellogg told her. “I’m fed up with it.”

Republicans are pushing for three downstate counties to include a referendum question on the November ballot asking whether voters support the General Assembly’s efforts to pass additional gun control legislation. Meanwhile, Illinois and Chicago are among the signees of a formal complaint against the U.S. Census Bureau for its decision to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census.

A Friday ruling issued by a federal judge in Washington, D.C. undoes a Federal Election Commission regulation that has allowed donors to so-called “dark money” organizations to remain anonymous — though the ruling is likely to be appealed.

All campaign contributions reported by Republicans (or Democrats) last week looked diminutive in comparison to the $3.5 million the Liberty Principles PAC banked from Wisconsin billionaire Dick Uihlein. Meanwhile, Gov. Bruce Rauner signed 71 bills, including one that expands sexual harassment education in Illinois public schools.

Former Illinois Department of Transportation workers whose jobs were eliminated in an anti-patronage effort launched by Gov. Bruce Rauner early in his term sued his administration to get their jobs back in Illinois federal court.

When the last of the employees hired under former Gov. Pat Quinn were laid off in September of 2016, Rauner called hailed the elimination of their positions as a victory for transparent government. During the campaign, Rauner frequently criticized his opponent for the continuation of political hiring practices at IDOT during the 2014 gubernatorial contest.

Many of the hundreds of “staff assistants” who lost their jobs during the Rauner purge had been hired under former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, but Rauner’s efforts reclassified these “Rutan-exempt” political jobs as “Rutan-covered,” meaning they had to be awarded based on merit.

The 18-page complaint, filed in the Central District of Illinois, alleges the employees should not have been reassigned to different jobs, and that the move was motivated by political reasons in violation of the workers’ First Amendment rights.

The plaintiffs’ attorney, noted union lawyer Don Craven, wrote in the suit that the Rauner administration’s assertion that the employees were laid off because of a lack of work was a “pretense.”

“Each plaintiff was fully engaged in the work and mission of IDOT, each plaintiff had a series of projects in line to complete, and each was constantly being given new assignments to complete,” according to the complaint.

The suit said the “real reason” for the workers’ terminations “was that they were were employed by the prior administration (under then Governor Patrick Quinn who was a member of the Democratic Party) of that they refused to become affiliated with the Rauner Administration.”

The employees demanded an unspecified amount of compensation and asked the court for a permanent injunction prohibiting Rauner from removing plaintiffs from their employment.

Additionally, the workers asked they be reinstated to their old jobs “with full restoration of seniority, credit for continuous service and restoration of all pension, insurance or other benefits of employment.”

Illinois pocketed $422 million in state and local sales taxes from video gaming terminals in FY 2018, according to a report out Thursday from the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability.

Illinois’ 29,283 terminals made a net $1.4 billion in income last year, the sixth year that video gambling was legal in the state, according to the report.

However, the report found the growth of video gaming terminals has slowed in recent years. In FY 2015, for example, Illinois added an average of 272 new terminals per month. That figure dropped to 263 per month in FY 2016 and to 249 in FY 2017. In FY 2018, the average number of new terminals per month was just 201.

The slowed growth isn’t necessarily a reason for alarm, COGFA senior revenue analyst Eric Noggle wrote.

“Despite the slower pace of new terminals, the continued increase in new video gaming terminals suggests that this industry has yet to reach its peak,” Noggle wrote.

The thousands of video gaming terminals in Illinois are located in more than 7,000 establishments statewide, including Springfield, which boasts 630 terminals, the highest number of terminals of any city by far. Video gaming is still prohibited within Chicago city limits. Rockford, Decatur, Joliet and unincorporated areas of Lake County also are home to hundreds of terminals. But the number of terminals don’t tell the whole story.

“In terms of tax revenues generated from video gaming machines, Rockford generated the most in FY 2018, followed by Springfield, Decatur, Waukegan and Loves Park,” according to the report.

Video gaming was sold as a cash cow to lawmakers in the last major gambling expansion bill passed in Springfield in 2012. Revenue from the terminals is taxed at 30 percent, with five-sixths of the taxes going toward the Capital Projects Fund and the remaining one-sixth funneled to the local governments in which the video gaming machines are located.

The 2012 law capped the number of video gaming terminals any one establishment can have at five, though a bill pushed by State Rep. Bob Rita (D-Blue Island) would increase that number to six, along with expand gambling in various other forms across the state.

Despite the prohibition on video gaming terminals within Chicago, COGFA’s report said Cook County “still had, by far, the most video gaming terminals of any county” in Illinois last year with 5,071 terminals. Cook County also generated the most revenue of any other county, netting $298.6 million last year. But even with the large number of terminals in the suburban part of the county, Cook County ranked 97 of Illinois’ 102 counties in terms of net terminal income per capita.

The local share of taxes from the video game terminals have also been a boon for cities and towns. The portion of taxes collected that go to municipalities jumped from $6.1 million in 2013 to $70.3 million last year. That figure has steadily risen by about $10 million in each of the last four years.

Gov. Bruce Rauner on Thursday signed two bills designed to speed up the process for which patients are approved for Medicaid long-term care. Later, the governor signed a bill that undoes an 84-year-old liquor law.