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Authors: Terrence Hake
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the people who might be traipsing through at any moment included clerks in shirtsleeves, attorneys in suits, police officers in blue, and bailiffs in black. Other court workers breezed in to find files they had misplaced or to use the private washroom rather than one marred by graffiti down the hall, which served as a pre-trial meeting place for defense lawyers and their lowlife clients.
Occasionally a defendant taking a shortcut to the clerkâs office behind the chambers walked in and wondered why a judge was there in a swivel chair. Comfortable amid the chaos, and looking and sounding like the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield, Olson would ignore everything not directly concerning him, even quarrels among attorneys or staff members.
Why did he want to leave early every day? Like a coach more interested in popularity than winning, he would take his staff and some fawning lawyers to Jeans or another restaurant with a bar. When they entered, the attorneys flanking him were like scavenger birds encircling a rhinoceros for the privilege of plucking food from between his teeth.
Despite Olsonâs show of good humor, he could be rude, sarcastic, and ill tempered. If the state judicial disciplinary commission had beeneffective, he would be a bartender instead of wearing a robe. The former train conductor and polka band drummer would boast that as a private attorney he had paid off every judge he ever appeared before. At the age of thirty he lost a run for the state senate, and his unfulfilled heart remained in politics rather than the law. But after he was elected to the bench, something happened in 1964 that ended his hopes of going any further than a preliminary hearing court.
He and his drinking buddies had landed in a place named the Alibi Inn. At closing time the Democratic Olson and one of his friends started squabbling outside with a sixty-year-old man who said he was going to vote for the Republican presidential candidate. Olson claimed later that he saw a pistol in the manâs hand and pushed him in self-defense. Whatever the truth, the older man fell back and cracked his head on the pavement. Prosecutors called it involuntary manslaughter. A court reporter once told me that a colleague had to take a witnessâs statement eight times before the witness got his story straight. âStraightâ meant in Olsonâs favor. And so the county grand jury declined to return an indictment.
Why were such judges kept on the bench? In Chicago, politicians decide the candidates, and the people are asked to vote from long lists of names meaning nothing to them. Many voters just choose names reflecting a certain nationality or that âsound nice.â
In an ideal world, judges wouldnât even have to run for election, but Chicago has never been accused of being an ideal world. Judgeships were awarded to people who could deliver the most votes for the Party slateâDemocratic in the city, and Republican in the outer suburbs. There also was a rumor that judgeships could be bought for thirty thousand dollars or more. Not all the judges who were given their robes by the machines were looking for payoffs, but many of the honest ones were naive or gratefully blind to what was going on, which is a kind of corruption in itself.
My introduction into the fixerâs milieu had taken longer than we expected, but at last I was able to start directing events my way. From my conversations with Costello, I picked up that of all the judges in the system he hated Wayne Olson most. Jim maintained a hazy fantasy in which he would have been a man of integrity if it hadnât been for âthat Swede son of a bitch,â forgetting that there isnât much of a step down from being a crooked policeman to becoming a crooked lawyer.
Until recently Costello would place Olsonâs bribe with a clerk. But because Mike Ficaro, head of the stateâs attorneyâs criminal division, had some fun shuffling the clerks
Occasionally a defendant taking a shortcut to the clerkâs office behind the chambers walked in and wondered why a judge was there in a swivel chair. Comfortable amid the chaos, and looking and sounding like the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield, Olson would ignore everything not directly concerning him, even quarrels among attorneys or staff members.
Why did he want to leave early every day? Like a coach more interested in popularity than winning, he would take his staff and some fawning lawyers to Jeans or another restaurant with a bar. When they entered, the attorneys flanking him were like scavenger birds encircling a rhinoceros for the privilege of plucking food from between his teeth.
Despite Olsonâs show of good humor, he could be rude, sarcastic, and ill tempered. If the state judicial disciplinary commission had beeneffective, he would be a bartender instead of wearing a robe. The former train conductor and polka band drummer would boast that as a private attorney he had paid off every judge he ever appeared before. At the age of thirty he lost a run for the state senate, and his unfulfilled heart remained in politics rather than the law. But after he was elected to the bench, something happened in 1964 that ended his hopes of going any further than a preliminary hearing court.
He and his drinking buddies had landed in a place named the Alibi Inn. At closing time the Democratic Olson and one of his friends started squabbling outside with a sixty-year-old man who said he was going to vote for the Republican presidential candidate. Olson claimed later that he saw a pistol in the manâs hand and pushed him in self-defense. Whatever the truth, the older man fell back and cracked his head on the pavement. Prosecutors called it involuntary manslaughter. A court reporter once told me that a colleague had to take a witnessâs statement eight times before the witness got his story straight. âStraightâ meant in Olsonâs favor. And so the county grand jury declined to return an indictment.
Why were such judges kept on the bench? In Chicago, politicians decide the candidates, and the people are asked to vote from long lists of names meaning nothing to them. Many voters just choose names reflecting a certain nationality or that âsound nice.â
In an ideal world, judges wouldnât even have to run for election, but Chicago has never been accused of being an ideal world. Judgeships were awarded to people who could deliver the most votes for the Party slateâDemocratic in the city, and Republican in the outer suburbs. There also was a rumor that judgeships could be bought for thirty thousand dollars or more. Not all the judges who were given their robes by the machines were looking for payoffs, but many of the honest ones were naive or gratefully blind to what was going on, which is a kind of corruption in itself.
My introduction into the fixerâs milieu had taken longer than we expected, but at last I was able to start directing events my way. From my conversations with Costello, I picked up that of all the judges in the system he hated Wayne Olson most. Jim maintained a hazy fantasy in which he would have been a man of integrity if it hadnât been for âthat Swede son of a bitch,â forgetting that there isnât much of a step down from being a crooked policeman to becoming a crooked lawyer.
Until recently Costello would place Olsonâs bribe with a clerk. But because Mike Ficaro, head of the stateâs attorneyâs criminal division, had some fun shuffling the clerks
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