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The Illinois Supreme Court, the appellate courts, or the circuit courts may appoint attorneys from OSAD to represent these defendants. [1] To carry out these duties in the appellate courts of the state, the Office has district offices in each of the five appellate court districts of Illinois – Chicago, Elgin, Mt. Vernon, Ottawa, and Springfield.
The public defender system is not the only form of indigent defense program offered in the United States. Besides the public defender system, there are two other main alternatives: assigned-counsel system and contract-service system. [3] Assigned-counsel is where the court appoints a private lawyer to defend someone who cannot afford to pay. [3]
The Cook County Public Defender provides legal representation for indigent clients in the areas of felony and misdemeanor criminal cases, delinquency, abuse/neglect, some appeals, post-conviction and traffic (non-petty) cases when appointed by the Court throughout Cook County, Illinois, which includes Chicago.
He served as an assistant public defender in the Office of the Cook County Public Defender from 1991 to 2003, where he represented indigent individuals in both civil and criminal proceedings. From 2003 to 2014, he served as an associate judge on Cook County Circuit Court , a state trial court of general jurisdiction based in Chicago.
The term public defender in the United States is often used to describe a lawyer who is appointed by a court to represent a defendant who cannot afford to hire an attorney. More correctly, a public defender is a lawyer who works for a public defender's office, a government-funded agency that provides legal representation to indigent defendants.
The Northern District of Illinois, which contains the entire Chicago metropolitan area, accounts for 1,531 of the 1,828 public corruption convictions in the state between 1976 and 2012, almost 84%, also making it the federal district with the most public corruption convictions in the nation between 1976 and 2012. [5]
The attorney with the public defender’s office is Sirena Saunders, 43, identified as Sirena Lourdes Saunders in jail records and Sirena Diazverso Saunders in police reports.
All discussions of public business are presumed to be open to the public, except for matters specifically exempted by law. OMA also requires public bodies to allow public comment at every meeting. Persons alleging a violation of FOIA or OMA may file a complaint with the PAC or the Illinois circuit courts.