Cook County State's Attorney Eileen O'Neill Burke has eliminated the public do-not-call list and a related disclosure list that once flagged as many as 200 current and former Chicago police officers with documented credibility problems, replacing them with an internal system that leans heavily on officers to report their own misconduct. The change, enacted through a December 2025 policy, has alarmed defense attorneys who say they now sometimes learn of an officer's troubled history as late as the morning of trial.
Burke, who took office in December 2024, overrode the county's previous Brady/Giglio disclosure framework in March 2025 before rolling out the December 2025 policy, according to a timeline laid out by The Chicago Reporter. That policy replaced the old lists with an internal “officers relieved of police authority” list and confidential Brady/Giglio files, and it now requires prosecutors to document misconduct, dishonesty, credibility findings, and social media activity. Under the new framework, the Burke administration relies more heavily on officers' own responses to a standardized Brady/Giglio questionnaire, and disclosures are supposed to be made as soon as practicable rather than through a running public roster.
Her predecessor, Kim Foxx, took a very different approach. Foxx maintained a public do-not-call list alongside a separate internal disclosure list, and Cook County officers were notified whenever they were placed on either one, with 90 days to challenge that placement. In July 2023, Foxx's office publicly released a version of that list identifying 174 current and former law enforcement officers, including 120 Chicago police officers, who were precluded from testifying due to severe misconduct — a roster that included high-profile names like Jason Van Dyke, Ronald Watts, and Reynaldo Guevara.
Why Prosecutors Are Obligated to Disclose
The legal foundation for all of this traces back to two U.S. Supreme Court cases. Brady v. Maryland established prosecutors' duty to disclose material evidence favorable to the defense, while Giglio v. United States extended that disclosure duty specifically to evidence undermining a government witness's credibility. Together, Brady and Giglio require prosecutors to actively determine whether evidence exists that could undermine a witness's credibility, and Kyles v. Whitley later held that prosecutors must learn of favorable evidence known to police and other government actors, not just what lands on their own desks.
Notably, a public Brady list is not constitutionally required, which is part of what gives Burke's office room to make this change. Chicago police officers can be placed on disclosure lists for dishonesty and ethics violations, and prosecutors remain responsible for identifying and disclosing material impeachment evidence regardless of what format that tracking takes.
Defense Attorneys Describe Late and Uneven Disclosures
Sharlyn Grace, deputy public defender for policy at the Cook County Public Defender's Office, said unreliable disclosures threaten court-system integrity and public trust in law enforcement and criminal courts, per the Reporter's account. Jon Loevy, a Chicago attorney representing people in wrongful-conviction and police-misconduct cases, said he has rarely seen Brady material disclosed before trial during his decades practicing in Illinois courts. Defense attorneys sometimes receive disclosures as late as the morning of trial, and those late disclosures can force them to choose between delaying a case to investigate the evidence or proceeding without adequate time to review it.
Austin Segal, director of research at Appleseed Chicago, said relying heavily on officers to self-report misconduct presents a conflict of interest. According to Segal, the Burke administration's policy gives prosecutors fewer avenues for uncovering evidence that undermines witness credibility. That critique echoes a broader assessment from the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, which published a report in May titled “500 Days Forward, 10 Years Back” concluding that Burke reduced checks on police power and weakened relief mechanisms for wrongfully convicted individuals.
The Financial Weight of Officer Misconduct
The stakes extend well beyond individual trials. Chicago taxpayers spent $259 million in 2025 resolving police misconduct lawsuits, with nearly 60% of those funds covering wrongful conviction claims stemming from fabricated evidence and officer wrongdoing, according to WTTW News. Lawsuits linked to former detective Reynaldo Guevara alone have cost taxpayers more than $62.5 million, while claims tied to former sergeant Ronald Watts totaled $101.3 million across 184 separate lawsuits — both officers were on the 2023 public do-not-call list.
The city budgeted $82.5 million in 2026 for police misconduct settlements but was forced to authorize $283.3 million in additional borrowing after spending over $225 million in just the first six months of the year, the same outlet reported. Illinois leads the nation in exonerations, with more than 570 recorded wrongful convictions since 1989 driven largely by systemic police misconduct clusters concentrated in Cook County, according to the Innocence Project.
Experts Weigh Risks to Fair Trials
Brandon Garrett, a Duke Law professor, said concealing information about whom a jury should believe makes a trial unfair and unlawful. He noted that Brady violations can contribute to wrongful convictions, and that Brady information needs to be tracked consistently to be useful. A public list of officers with serious credibility concerns would enable defense attorneys and agencies to cross-reference information, something the current internal-only system does not offer in the same way.
Rachel Moran, a law professor and founder of the Criminal and Juvenile Defense Clinic at the University of St. Thomas, and Arthur Haynes, program director at the Illinois Justice Project in Chicago, both spoke to the broader consequences of undisclosed impeachment evidence. Haynes noted that officers stripped of police powers or found to have engaged in misconduct in one jurisdiction can simply move to another police department. Undisclosed Brady information can leave defendants making decisions — including whether to accept a plea — without knowing that a key prosecution witness has credibility problems, and defendants maintaining their innocence may accept plea agreements rather than remain incarcerated while fighting charges.
A Statewide Tracking Gap
Illinois's SAFE-T Act does provide one layer of statewide tracking outside county prosecutorial lists. The Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board maintains a Professional Conduct Database, requiring departments to file mandatory “Form R” paperwork when officers are terminated, suspended for 10 or more days, or resign under investigation. But that state database operates separately from county-level prosecution files, and Illinois court operations and judicial records remain exempt from state Freedom of Information Act disclosures under a 1995 appellate court ruling — restricting public and defense access to central judicial records without prosecutorial cooperation, per the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts.
Segal's broader point, echoed throughout the debate, is that both prosecutors and police need systems capable of identifying misconduct before it ever reaches a courtroom. Police officers who repeatedly lie in cases can contribute to wrongful convictions, and reformers argue that the Cook County State's Attorney's Office has weakened policies intended to ensure court transparency and keep dishonest officers off the witness stand. Whether the internal system Burke's office now relies on can catch what the public lists once caught remains an open question defense attorneys say they are still testing case by case.
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