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Reform advocate Sharone Mitchell’s appointment as Cook County public defender made official

The Cook County board on Thursday unanimously approved the appointment of attorney and reform advocate Sharone Mitchell Jr. as the next public defender.

Mitchell, a former assistant public defender who went on to work for a statewide justice reform group, will take office April 1.

At a hearing Wednesday before a committee of county commissioners, Mitchell said he was honored to be county President Toni Preckwinkle’s pick, and said he was eager to take on the work in a critical time for the system.

“There should be no norm or no practice that we shouldn’t ask if it improves our clients’ outcomes,” he said, noting that the office must “be informed by a movement that has demanded a revamping of how we approach our justice system.”

Mitchell worked in the public defender’s office before going to the Illinois Justice Project, an advocacy group that most recently fought for a sweeping criminal justice reform bill signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker last month.

The public defender heads up an office of some 700 employees, including about 500 attorneys. The office is tasked with representing criminal defendants who cannot afford private lawyers.

Mitchell’s upbringing in South Shore and West Pullman helped shape his view of the court system, he told commissioners Wednesday.

Right out of law school, on one of his first days as an intern with the public defender’s office, he was assigned to speak with a defendant in a courthouse lockup, only to come across someone he went to grade school with, he said.

“He couldn’t get past how someone who came from where we came from was on the other side of the bars in a suit and tie,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell will replace Amy Campanelli, who had applied for a second six-year term but was not chosen by the selection committee.

In fact — in a somewhat surprising move some viewed as a clear snub of the incumbent — the selection committee presented Preckwinkle with only two finalists, not including Campanelli, instead of the three they were supposed to have forwarded.

After her appointment in 2015, Campanelli cut a much more public figure than many of her predecessors, becoming well-known for her seemingly boundless energy and fierce advocacy of indigent clients both in and out of the courtroom.

She and others sued the city of Chicago last summer over allegations that they routinely denied suspects access to phones. Her office took steps to improve representation of immigrant clients, and she has been an outspoken advocate for bond reform and other policy changes. Campanelli herself came to the Leighton Criminal Court Building last year to urge a judge to speed up pretrial release for detainees as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold.

But she found herself on the other end of a lawsuit in 2017, when female assistant public defenders — her own staffers — sued her, alleging she and Sheriff Tom Dart had not done enough to curb an epidemic of male detainees from exposing themselves, masturbating and threatening attorneys in courtroom lockups and the county jail.

Cook County commissioners in November approved a $14 million payout to settle the suit. The next month, Preckwinkle announced she would be seeking applicants for the public defender position.

At a news conference Thursday, Preckwinkle denied that the lawsuit had anything to do with Campanelli’s failure to get another term. And Preckwinkle said the selection committee was responsible for selecting the finalists, and not her.

She praised Mitchell as talented and noted his experience in advocacy related to reform.

“I’m very grateful that he was willing to take on the challenge,” she said.

mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com