In this request submitted via email on Thursday May 28th we requested the following records be provided to CJP in digital format:
Please provide CJP all the data created/stored/retained by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office related to felony prosecutions for the year 2013 for all closed cases. Please make sure the data is de-identified – this means we do not want you to release the identifies of any any witnesses, victims, or offenders. We do however want you to provide the identifies of prosecutors involved in the cases as they are government employees.
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DENIED!
The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (SAO) denials of FOIA is centrally focused on two exemptions:
(you can read the SAO’s denial for yourself by downloading the document below)
- Overly burdensome. They cite the fact that they would have to hand count their cases to determine which were opened in 2013.
- When they emailed CJP about if we were requesting individual prosecutor names to be included in the data we were seeking I said yes. The SAO then decided our FOIA was more like an interrogatory rather than a FOIA.
It is clear from these denials the SAO has absolutely no intention of ever granting our FOIAs and would bend and stretch the laws regarding FOIA to allow them to deny our requests.
