After eight years in office, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is passing the torch.

Foxx was among a cadre of so-called progressive prosecutors to take office around the country eight years ago. She became the first Black woman to assume the role in Cook County, promising to reshape the criminal justice system.

After Foxx announced she would not seek a third term, voters replaced her with retired judge Eileen O’Neill Burke, who pledges to take a tougher approach on crime.

Before the top prosecutor leaves office, she spoke with WTTW News’ Brandis Friedman about the legacy she’s leaving behind and what’s in store for the future.

WTTW News: How is the Kim Fox of today different from the one who took office?

Kim Foxx: The Kim Foxx of eight years ago was wildly optimistic about the opportunity to transform our criminal justice system. The older, wiser Kim Fox is really proud of the work that we’ve done over the course of the last eight years. I didn’t anticipate it would be as rocky a ride as it was, but I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve done.

You were, of course, a vocal supporter of eliminating cash bail, which has been in effect for over a year now under the SAFE-T Act. What are your thoughts on how it’s not only impacted public safety, but also the people who come in contact with the criminal justice system?

Foxx: This is historic legislation. No other state in the country has eliminated cash bail. And a year out, we’ve seen that people who are not a threat to public safety are able to go home, work, provide for their families and are still showing up to court, and that people who pose a danger are being detained. So, the impact is significant for those individual families and communities where the devastation of trying to find cash to secure their freedom is no longer a burden. More importantly, we aren’t seeing scenarios where people would be willing to plead to anything to get out of jail, to go home. We’ve worked on wrongful convictions, and I think people miss the connection with the cash bail system, where people were languishing and saying and doing whatever they could to get home, and we’ve minimized that.

The legalization of cannabis and then expunging records of people with minor marijuana convictions was another mission of your tenure. Does Cook County need to go further with weed equity? What more do you think needs to be done?

Foxx: I have to remind people that African Americans and Latinos were four or five times more likely to be prosecuted for weed cases than White citizens. From an equity standpoint, legalization and allowing everyone to be treated the same was critically important. Where we are now is that we don’t see those prosecutions for marijuana, but when you talk about going further, we still have in terms of the business model where people who are benefiting from legal marijuana sales are not reflective of the people who were harmed from the prosecutions in the past. I know that there’s been work to try to make the business more equitable, but from a criminal justice standpoint, I’m proud to say that we are not prosecuting those cases.

When you were first elected, you along with several other prosecuting attorneys around the country were labeled as so-called progressive prosecutors. But you’ve also taken some criticism from folks who feel that your office could have been tougher on crime and on prosecutions. How would you describe your approach to criminal justice?

Foxx: Our approach has been smart on crime. I have to remind people that every day when they pick up a newspaper or watch the news and they say: ‘Prosecutors have charged or prosecutors got a guilty verdict,’ that’s Kim Foxx’s office. I tend to hear that my name is mentioned when there is something negative, but every day our prosecutors are putting in the hard work of prosecuting gangs, guns and drugs, prosecuting people who are committing violent offenses, prosecuting the murderers of Paul Bauer and Ella French and Hadiya Pendleton and Tyshawn Lee. One of the reasons that we wanted to have data publicly available was so that you can compare, were we prosecuting as many gun cases as my predecessor? And the reality was, not only were we prosecuting as much, but more. I think there was a perception issue because we talked so much about reform that people took for granted that the hardworking men and women in the State’s Attorney’s Office were prosecuting cases at higher levels than most other prosecutors offices in the country.

You’ve made it a priority for your office to review the integrity of some convictions to determine whether those convictions should still stand. Why did you take that on?

Foxx: I knew that the reality was that these are human endeavors and the criminal justice system is fallible. As a prosecutor, there’s nothing that keeps me up at night more than thinking, ‘Did I put someone in prison for a crime they didn’t commit?’ Cook County had a reputation of being the false confession capital of the United States. We had a history with Cmdr. Jon Burge that everyone is fully aware of. I wanted to come in and say we owe a responsibility for people who don’t trust the justice system to acknowledge when we’ve gotten things wrong and actively work to make them right.

As your time comes to an end, I know that you’ve been getting a lot of calls and requests from individuals who are either incarcerated or have a prosecution on their record, as well as their attorneys, for their cases to be reconsidered. How much of that are you able to do before you leave office? And obviously, that time is coming quickly.

Foxx: It’s coming very quickly. We appreciate the urgency of the matter for those who believe that they’ve been wrongfully convicted, but we don’t vacate a conviction in a blase manner. It’s a real effort to review the file, talk to witnesses and look at the history of cases. Sometimes they are 10, 20, 30 years old. If those cases hadn’t been in a pipeline for some time, it’s almost impossible to get to them. It’s certainly my hope that my successor will continue to take those calls, to have a unit that is aggressively looking at these cases, because I believe we’ve just scratched the tip of the iceberg.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has launched his own conviction integrity unit in his office. Do you think something like that is necessary for a statewide office?

Foxx: Absolutely. It’s something that I had been calling for for the last couple of years. If we in Cook County have 250 convictions that we vacated thus far, I know that the human system that we have in Cook is the same one in DuPage or Alexander or Champaign County. I also know that we have a budget and resources which still aren’t nearly enough given the volume that those smaller counties don’t have. In the interest of justice, I think having a statewide review is important, and I think it is very important that the attorney general is taking a lead on that.

Then there’s the Jussie Smollett case. How do you look back on that? Would you have done anything differently? And where does that fall in the eight-year legacy of Kim Foxx?

Foxx: I think the media will always connect Jussie and I together. I’ve always said that my biggest regret about that is the light that it’s shown on our office that eclipsed the work that they do every single day. This was a low-level, non-violent offense, and it’s still, five years later, being litigated before the Supreme Court. While that case was pending, there were people who were trying rape cases, murder cases, significant cases. In the history of media attention to one case, I’ve never seen anything like it. What I certainly would hope is that we have that same level of scrutiny of what happened with Jussie in the cases of Jimmy Soto, who spent 42 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Or the fact that in that case, we had a special prosecutor who was appointed almost within months. I think about the Kochman case, where the mother of this man who was killed took years to get justice, and so I think there is a conversation to be had.

You’re the first Black woman to serve as Cook County state’s attorney, only Black woman to serve as anybody’s state’s attorney in the state of Illinois. What challenges do you face? What were the hardest parts that you went up against?

Foxx: I think any time you’re breaking a glass ceiling, and it was indeed a glass ceiling, you get cuts, and so I have a lot of scalp wounds. There’s a level of scrutiny that is very different when you come into this work as a first. People don’t know what to expect. There are those challenges of having your credibility questioned, folks undermining your decisions. Again, processes being different than what your predecessors had seen. I never worried about that. There was work to be done, and what I knew that as a Black woman doing this work and all of that attention that I would garner, that I had to have a level of excellence to deliver. It’s why I smile when we talk about how we’ve eliminated cash bail, legalized marijuana, vacated hundreds of convictions and have prosecuted people who’ve killed police officers and everyday citizens. I’m proud.

You’ve said that you experienced some threats to yourself and your family.

Foxx: Absolutely, I didn’t talk about it in real time because the work matters, but the level of sexualized and racialized threats that I received — there was a man who threatened to shoot me in the head and hang me from a tree, and was prosecuted for that. There was a man who served 18 months in federal prison for threatening to rattle my brain with bullets. I think we have to talk about that in this era of this political climate where it now feels that anything goes. Public servants don’t sign up for that. I’m a mother of four daughters, and I remember there were nights that I was afraid to walk outside of my home, and I certainly would hope for my successor that she would not have to see that as a woman doing this work, and that she would have people around her who would make sure that she’s safe and protected.

You have been in touch with your successor, Eileen O’Neill Burke. You’ve given her advice, I assume?

Foxx: Certainly, she is well versed in the law. She has a significant amount of experience. It’s very different being a lawyer and then being the top prosecutor. I’ve told everyone around her, the county board included, to give her grace. For her to get engaged with the community that she serves. Get from behind the desk, get into the community and listen and have the humility to work together collaboratively.

What are you doing next?

Foxx: This radical thing called rest.