Beach will be Cook County’s first new chief judge in 24 years, after defeating eight-term incumbent Timothy Evans.

Tim Mapes, who for decades served as the right hand for former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and the Illinois Democratic Party's executive director, has launched a legal fight with the state to reclaim his $154,000 per year pension, saying the state pension board wrongly stripped him of his pension after he was convicted of perjury for allegedly attempting to obstruct federal criminal proceedings against his former boss.

The McLean County Sheriff's department is fessing up to an error that allowed federal immigration agencies to search its database of Flock Safety license plate reading cameras for more than four months this year.

The Illinois Supreme Court will hear several cases this month regarding pretrial release. In Illinois v. Seymore, the top court could decide whether people can use good conduct credits to reduce pretrial jail sanctions.

Chicago police officers pointed their guns at individuals 4,209 times in 2024, an increase of nearly 44% since 2022, according to Chicago Police Department data shared with the federal judge overseeing the ongoing effort to reform the department.

The Illinois Supreme Court has selected Justice P. Scott Neville, Jr. as the 123rd Chief Justice. He will be the second Black Chief Justice in Illinois history, following the late Justice Charles E. Freeman, who served from 1997 to 1999.

Incumbent Timothy Evans has served for 24 years, already the longest of any chief judge in Cook County history. Two challengers are vying for control of a court system that gavels in half a million new cases per year.