Soulless by Jim Derogatis

Author:Jim Derogatis
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2019-06-07T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

THE STATE OF ILLINOIS V. ROBERT SYLVESTER KELLY

With R. Kelly’s defense team having exhausted their delaying tactics after six years, and with Judge Vincent Gaughan often siding with them in sealed rulings limiting the evidence and testimony he would allow in the trial so as not to prejudice the jury, The State of Illinois v. Robert Sylvester Kelly finally was set to begin in the spring of 2008. It would take place at Twenty-Sixth and Cal on the fifth floor of the Cook County Criminal Court Building, one of the grandest, most storied structures in Chicago, a city lousy with such places. Constructed of limestone trucked in from Indiana, the seven-story tower opened a few miles south of the Loop in 1929, weeks after the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. Built at the then-staggering cost of $7.5 million, it sat on a strip of land that, not coincidentally, happened to be owned by the family of Anton Cermak, leader of the Cook County Democratic Party, and a future mayor of Chicago.

The county courts had outgrown their previous home in the Loop, and the new courts building bordering the West Side neighborhood of Little Village, rapidly becoming one of the city’s most vibrant Latinx communities, quickly became one of the busiest judicial centers in the United States. Judges in the tower’s thirty-one courtrooms decide twenty-two thousand cases a year, from street-corner busts for possession of weed, to multiple murders like the Brown’s Chicken massacre. Al Capone made numerous appearances there, and his sneering picture hangs in one of the marble hallways between two solid-brass light fixtures. John Wayne Gacy also strolled the corridors in chains, but court clerks preferred not to think about his trial for the brutal sexual assault, torture, and murder of at least thirty-three teenage boys and young men in the seventies. They were more likely to mention rubbing elbows with Harrison Ford during the filming of The Fugitive in 1993.

Designed to impress upon visitors the awesome power of the law, Greek and Roman flourishes abound. The building boasts eight huge columns on its front façade, and its top-floor windows are framed by statues of classical figures symbolizing law, justice, liberty, truth, might, love, wisdom, and peace. Judges preside from thronelike benches that look down on courtrooms filled with dark rosewood paneling, but the building isn’t always as regal as it appears at first glance. Stifling in the summer, it’s freezing during the winter. Scurrying mice sometimes distract lawyers as they address the court, and jurors have been known to shriek when a huge cockroach drops from the ceiling.

In the weeks before jury selection began in the Kelly trial, Judge Gaughan demanded that the county paint Courtroom 500 and spiff up the hallway leading from the elevator. He said he wanted the facility to look its best for the world’s press. At his urging, a maintenance crew also reopened and repaired an unused handicap ramp on the ground floor, and he devoted that entrance exclusively to Kelly and his entourage.

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