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It’s attributed to first assistant state’s attorney Robert Milan, Cook County’s second-ranking prosecutor. I assume this is just careless venting over the fact that Cook County Board president Todd Stroger has apparently backed out of an agreement to boost prosecutors’ pay. Because if it’s how Milan and the attorneys he supervises really think, then it means the state’s attorney’s office doesn’t have much respect for some of the basic fundamentals of American justice.
Mr. Milan has spent more time in law school than I have, but it’s my understanding that the people represented by the public defender’s office have merely been accused of crimes. Perhaps it would be more efficient and less costly (an important point, since we need more money to pay prosecutors better) if all the people Milan’s office deemed to be criminals were simply declared guilty. But that’s not how it works–for obvious reasons.
And it doesn’t have anything to do with the battle over pay raises for prosecutors–or public defenders, for that matter.
