CHICAGO — State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is not running for reelection.
Foxx made her announcement during a fiery, off-the-cuff City Club of Chicago speech Tuesday. She praised her office for its reforms and criticized those who have blamed her tenure for violent crime in Chicago — and she directed particular ire at critics who she said tried to tie her to the Jussie Smollett scandal while she focused on freeing people who were wrongly convicted.
Foxx said growing up in Cabrini-Green informed her policies and made her want to focus her efforts on helping people in similar communities — and she’ll continue to do that even when she leaves office in 2024.
“When I became state’s attorney, I knew that I had a mission and agenda that I knew I wanted to achieve — which was fairness, justice and equity, and that kids who lived in neighborhoods just like mine could live to see another day — and not just live, but they could be lawyers and policymakers in the city that they call home,” Foxx said. “And I feel that I have done that.”
Foxx has led Cook County’s prosecutors since 2016, pushing for — and securing — significant criminal justice reforms. But she’s become the target of intense criticism from conservatives, with some blaming her for Chicago’s crime woes, and she has also faced heat from Mayor Lori Lightfoot and police leaders.
At the beginning of Tuesday’s speech, Foxx noted she was not the state’s attorney in 2016, when Chicago saw more than 700 homicides — the highest number since the bloody ’90s. Homicides and violent crime fell in 2017, 2018 and 2019, Foxx’s first three years in office, she said.
“It doesn’t add up” to blame Foxx’s office for the rise in violent crime, which coincided with the COVID-10 pandemic, she said.
But from the moment Foxx was inaugurated, as a Black woman from Cabrini-Green, “my presence was disruptive,” she said.
Foxx focused her efforts on reforms, centering her bail reform work in the Black and Brown community, she said.
And Foxx’s assistant state’s attorneys have tried and won major cases, she said, pointing to the prosecutions of people who killed police Commander Paul Bauer, 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee and others.
“And while it does not fit the narrative of what it is this administration has done, these men and women tirelessly, first and foremost,” put the work of keeping communities safe at the forefront, Foxx said.
But, in particular, people who have “struggled with [Foxx’s] leadership” have again and again pointed at the Smollett scandal, she said.
“Probably when I leave this earth, my epitaph will mention Jussie Smollett,” Foxx said. “And it makes me mad.”
Police and prosecutors have said Smollett fabricated a hate crime to gain attention and get a pay raise on “Empire.” The actor told police that, while walking in Steeterville in January 2019, two men yelled racial and homophobic slurs at him, beat him, put a noose around his neck and threw liquid on him.
But within weeks, police said the account was untrue and charged Smollett with filing a false police report.
Foxx recused herself from the case, and shortly afterward her office dropped charges against Smollett. The office said it was doing so because Smollett had volunteered “in the community” and would give $10,000 to the city by forfeiting his bond.
A special prosecutor was eventually called in, and Smollett was convicted of disorderly conduct.
Foxx has, for years, received significant criticism for her office’s handling of the case.
But critics who have focused on that haven’t paid attention to the people Foxx has worked to free or the wrongs she’s sought to undo, she said Tuesday.
“Jose Cruz spent almost 30 years in prison in what he believed would be a life sentence for a crime he didn’t commit because he was framed by a corrupt Chicago police detective,” she said.
Foxx met Cruz as he was incarcerated last year, and he told her he hadn’t done the crime, she said. Just the day before, Foxx and her team had met to discuss Cruz’s case — so she knew, even as they met in person, he would soon be going home, she said.
“Mr. Cruz spent his first Thanksgiving and Christmas at home last year,” she said. “But you want to ask me about Jussie.”
Foxx also pointed to the Anjanette Young case, saying she struck by video of a naked Young as she pleaded for officers to let her put on clothing while they wrongfully raided her home.
“Our office did not wait for others to do the right thing,” Foxx said. “We implemented and changed our search warrant policy such that the state’s attorney’s office would not be complicit in having another Anjanette Young situation, for which our office took part.
“But you want to ask me about Jussie.”
Foxx said those cases — and others she highlighted, like the wrongful convictions of Marilyn Mulero and Clarissa Glenn — showed what her work was focused on.
“These are not just policy differentials,” Foxx said. “These are people. These are not talking points for the left or the right.”
Foxx did not say what she will do next, though she said she has informed Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson she won’t run for reelection.
Foxx served in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office for several years before starting to work for Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle in 2013 and rising up Chicago’s political ranks.
Foxx’s star was bright when she handily beat then-State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez in the 2016 Democratic primary, setting her up for a general election win. She was backed by progressive activists who saw her victory as a turning point for the prosecutor’s office.
Over the years, Foxx was lauded by some for her support of bail reform, her work to overturn wrongful convictions and her support for clearing the records of people convicted of minor marijuana crimes.
At the same time, critics said Foxx’s office didn’t do enough to prosecute people who had looted and vandalized during a summer of unrest in 2020.
Foxx won her 2020 reelection bid — but the vote was closer than it had been in 2016, with Foxx having lost ground among suburban voters.
Still, Foxx vowed to continue her reform work, saying people needed to focus on addressing disparities in the justice system, especially with low-level offenses. In her 2020 victory speech, she said she wanted to create a Chicago that is more equal.
“It means in this next term doubling down on our efforts to make sure that people with substance disorder or mental health issues” have resources they need, Foxx said in 2020. “It means dedicating our resources to attacking violent crime and the cycles of violence.
“It means continuing the work of righting the wrongs of our past,” whether that’s wrongful convictions or expunging people’s records for things that are no longer crimes.
But Foxx has remained a lightning rod for criticism. She became embroiled in a highly public feud with Lightfoot in October 2021 after Lightfoot repeatedly blamed the State’s Attorney’s Office for charges not being filed in a shooting case, while Foxx said Lightfoot’s version of the story was not true.
As violence surged in 2020 and 2021, the mayor and then-Supt. David Brown also repeatedly pointed fingers at the justice system, saying violent offenders were being released by lenient judges, contributing to gun crime.
But they never provided evidence of those claims — and studies have shown they are not true. A report from Loyola University found just 3 percent of defendants let out on bond committed another offense during their pre-trial period.
On Tuesday, Foxx said prosecutors like her — those who have tried to make changes — have come under fire in recent years as part of political disputes.
“The attack on prosecutors who say that we have failed in the past, but we can do better, is not unique to me in Cook County,” Foxx said. “But we have to get past political talking points.”
Foxx said it is the obligation of prosecutors like her to ensure people’s rights are not impugned, and critics have only reminded her why she pursued this work.
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