P. Scott Neville Jr.
Charles E. Freeman
The first black justice and longest-serving current member of the state’s top court has announced his retirement.
Justice Charles E. Freeman will step down from the Illinois Supreme Court effective next month. He will be replaced by current 1st District Appellate Justice P. Scott Neville Jr.
The high court announced the move early this afternoon.
“It is impossible to overstate Justice Freeman’s impact on Illinois law,” Chief Justice Lloyd A. Karmeier said in a statement. “In the course of his long tenure, he has participated in resolution of some of the most difficult and important controversies to come before the courts of Illinois. Research nearly any point of Illinois law and you will find controlling precedent that he authored.
“While Justice Freeman may be retiring from office, the extraordinary body of legal decisions he helped craft will serve as an enduring legacy of his commitment to justice and to the people of Illinois.”
First elected to the high court in 1990, Freeman served as chief justice between 1997 and 2000. He was elected to the Cook County Circuit Court in 1976, then to the 1st District Appellate Court 10 years later. Freeman, 84, is the fifth-longest serving Illinois high court justice, the court announcement said.
When Chicago elected Harold Washington as mayor in 1983, then-circuit judge Freeman delivered the oath to the city’s first black mayor. The two of them were friends and shared a law office earlier in their careers.
According to the court’s release today, Freeman, a descendant of slaves who was born in Richmond, Va., was asked about his heritage when he became the first black chief justice in 1997.
“I'm an African-American who now has become chief judge; I'm not an African-American chief justice. I have no different perception on what course I would take because of my heritage,” he said.
Freeman earned his law degree from The John Marshall Law School in 1962. He served as an assistant attorney general and assistant state’s attorney before being appointed as an arbitrator to the Illinois Industrial Commission, the forerunner of the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission. He also served as a commissioner on the Illinois Commerce Commission, where he was appointed in 1973.
Among Freeman’s most notable high court opinions was in the 1994 case People v. Cruz, No. 70407, in which the high court reversed a DuPage County man’s conviction for the rape and murder of a 10-year-old after a police officer admitted to lying about the defendant’s testimony. Rolando Cruz was eventually pardoned after another man admitted to the crime.
The court initially affirmed a death sentence for Cruz, but the next time around, Freeman wrote the court was “duty bound to play a larger role in preserving that very basic guarantee of our democratic society, that every person, however culpable, is entitled to a fair and impartial trial. We cannot deviate from the obligation of that role.”
That same year, in People v. McCauley, No. 73800, Freeman wrote a majority decision criticizing the denial of an attorney’s request to see a client who was being interrogated.
“The day is long past in Illinois, however, where attorneys must shout legal advice to their clients, held in custody, through the jailhouse door,” he wrote. “In this case, we determine that our [s]tate constitutional guarantees afforded defendant a greater degree of protection.”
More recently, Freeman wrote the majority decision striking down a law that forced judges to retire at the expiration of a term in which they turned 75 years of age. Freeman, in the 4-2 decision in Maddux v. Blagojevich, No. 107416, called the law irrational because it didn’t apply to people who were above age 75 and who had never been judges to begin with.
“If the legitimate state interest is to insure a ‘vigorous judiciary,’ the classification we describe above cannot be deemed rationally related to that purpose. We stress again that if age defines ability (and both the constitutional and legislative history indicate that it was believed that it does), either all those 75 years of age or older are unfit or they are not,” he wrote.
Freeman also authored the 6-1 majority opinion in 2014 holding health-care benefits for state workers to be protected by the state constitution. That ruling, Kanerva v. Weems, No. 115811, set the tone for broader decisions in the next two years striking down the General Assembly’s overhauls of state pension systems, decisions legislators are still grappling with.
The high court release today noted that Freeman helped start a push to end the shackling of juveniles. His dissent in a 2011 case, In re Jonathan C.B., No. 107750, found kids have the right to appear in courtrooms free of restraints. The court added a rule in 2016 that generally prohibits the shackling of minors.
Freeman’s current 10-year term was set to end in December 2020.
Neville’s appointment to the seat runs until that time, when the seat will be filled by the winner of a general election.
According to Sullivan’s Judicial Profiles, Neville was born in Chicago in 1948 into a family of lawyers.
He graduated from Washington University School of Law in 1973 and passed the Illinois bar the year later. Neville was appointed to the Cook County Circuit Court in October 1999, then joined the 1st District bench in June 2004.
Justices Robert R. Thomas and Thomas L. Kilbride also face retention questions in the 2nd and 3rd Judicial Districts respectively in 2020.
In a statement today, Thomas said there is no area of Illinois law that hasn’t been shaped to some extent by Freeman’s opinions, and that his influence will last long after his retirement.
“Charles is the court’s historian and elder statesman and honestly it is hard to imagine the [c]ourt without him,” Thomas said. “But much more than that he is a dear personal friend. I will miss him.”