26th and Cal: Snapshots from the Criminal Courts Building

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The daily court calls are posted on the same wall that closes off Jimmy Swift’s snack shop — also known as the Gang-Bangers Lounge — which sends the smell of sizzling bacon through the courthouse hallways and stairwells.

In the snack shop, Swift, 76, who is legally blind, hunches over a cash register beside a poster of the late Mayor Harold Washington. The slim man who wears a gold-hoop earring has been working there for more than two decades.

”I’ve seen a whole lot over here,” he said.

As the prospective jurors headed to the elevators leading to the trial courtrooms above, some of them stopped to look up at the coffered ceiling with colorful detailing, and at the massive flute columns in a grand hallway of the old courthouse.

Dating back to its opening on April Fool’s Day, 1929, the building has seen some notorious criminals — including Al Capone, Richard Speck, and John Wayne Gacy.

Jim Marks, a night-shift custodian, uses a makeshift tool to remove scuff marks from the shiny floors of the elegant hallway: a sneaker attached to the end of a broomstick. The device was given to him by his predecessor, he said. And the sneaker, he stressed, is not just any old shoe. Its owner, he said, was Gacy.

Marks recounted a story told to him — a custodian working the weekend when Gacy was first brought to the courthouse went to clean out the cell he was being held in before being hauled off to jail.

”The shoe was the only thing left,” Marks said. ”If the lore is true, there is some good out of him — that’s the way I look at it.”

The venire that morning reached Courtroom 202, one of the courtrooms added to the building’s second and third floors in the late 1970s. In the courtrooms nicknamed ”Fishbowls,” the slanted glass that separates the gallery from the theater-in-the-round reflected the faces of the men and women who had gathered for a murder trial.

”Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to 26th and California,” said Judge John Flemming, who kicked off the selection of a double jury.

The fishbowl courtrooms on the courthouse’s lower floors contrast sharply with the stately courtrooms of the building’s original construction on the fourth through seventh floors.

Michael P. Toomin, a supervising judge in the Criminal Division, presides in Courtroom 400, a dramatic courtroom with fluted stone pilasters and thick wooden benches and tables, where the original ornate ceiling is still intact.

”When you get a verdict at night time, it just takes on its own persona,” Toomin said. ”It’s a great room.”

The courtroom is where sheriff’s deputy Mike Stawczyk uses big skeleton keys to detain defendants in the old lockup in the back, where defense attorneys talk to clients between the cell bars. And it is also the courtroom that has appeared in several movies, including ”The Fugitive.”

Judge Bertina E. Lampkin, also a supervising judge, holds court in another of the old felony trial courtrooms.

At the front of her bench in Courtroom 506, she has placed an old roll-out desk that had been custom-built long ago for a judge’s chambers. Today, prosecutors and defense lawyers who are regulars to the courtroom use the vintage piece. So do the defendants who appear before the judge, signing their jury waiver forms and other documents as part of a plea agreement.

”I wish you the best, sir,” Lampkin said to one defendant who was signing such documents after pleading guilty to a burglary. ”Hopefully this will be your last time.”

The verdict

Just as the portion of 22nd Street in Little Village four blocks from the courthouse is said to serve as the dividing line between the Two-Two Boys and the Latin Kings — the rival street gangs at the heart of the murder trial at hand — the center aisle inside Courtroom 500 separated the mother and siblings of a 17-year-old man killed on that street in a 2005 shooting from some 20 relatives and friends of the young man standing trial for the murder.

Rene Guerrero was 15 and a Two-Two Boys gang member when he was charged with the murder of Jesus Murillo, a member of the Latin Kings.

When Assistant Public Defender Julie A. Koehler met her client, she said, he barely reached her shoulders. Two years later, the thin 17 year old with thick, black hair and a boyish face stood about a foot taller.

Wearing the dress slacks and mint-green shirt and tie his lawyers had brought for him for the last day of his trial, Guerrero settled into a seat next to Koehler. His right hand shook at his side as he waited at the thick wooden table for the jury to return with its verdict.

Lawyers had wrapped up closing arguments in the five-day trial, with each side finishing within the 40-minute time limit allotted by Judge Vincent M. Gaughan.

Jurors had deliberated for a little over an hour before reaching a verdict.

”No matter what the verdict is, there are real-life ramifications to what happens here — whether someone will die on Cermak Road tonight,” said Assistant State’s Attorney Louis C. Longhitano, who tried the case with his colleague, Cheryl L. Galvin. ”Somebody is going to be disappointed in a couple of minutes.”

At least eight sheriff’s deputies lined up near the doors at the back of the courtroom, some of them walking the aisle as Gaughan told those gathered that he would give them a few minutes to ”reach into your hearts” and determine whether or not they could control their emotions.

A fight had broken out earlier in the week just outside the courtroom, and Gaughan wanted to ward off any outbursts that could come with the announcement of the verdict.

Soon, the silence in the courtroom was broken with a clerk’s voice announcing that the jury had reached a verdict of not guilty.

Guerrero dropped his head to the side and Koehler, offering a wide smile, placed her hand on his. He mouthed the words ”thank you” as each juror was polled. And when the judge stepped down from the bench and headed to his chambers, Guerrero shouted out, ”Thank you, your honor. Thank you so much.”

In the marble-trimmed corridor outside the courtroom, Longhitano clutched the hands of Murillo’s mother.

”I’m very sorry,” he told her, as she wept and buried her face in the collar of her jacket. ”With God, there will be justice,” she muttered in Spanish.

The case was a tough one for prosecutors, Longhitano acknowledged, pointing out that no gun was recovered, there was no confession, and the witnesses to the shooting who testified were all gang members.

”If he commits a crime in front of gang-bangers then my witnesses aren’t going to be as credible,” Longhitano said. ”Most of the time they don’t shoot somebody down in front of a convent.”

For Koehler and Assistant Public Defender Kathleen Moriarty, who helped defend Guerrero, the job on this case wasn’t quite finished. They had taken back the clothes their client was wearing (otherwise, Moriarty said, ”he’d be an easy target” after his release that night) and Koehler said she made sure the teen has a plane ticket out of town.

”I just hope they get him out of here before any retaliation occurs. Now we just have to make sure our kid doesn’t end up dead tomorrow,” Moriarty said. ”It’s great to get a not guilty, but what are we sending him out into?”

As for the prosecutors, it was back to a pile of pending cases to be heard in Courtroom 500.

”There’s another grieving mother who’s going to be in court next week,” Longhitano said.

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