An Unfair Attack By Judge Jill Cerone Marisie

Posted on 16. Jan, 2012 by Joseph Fosco in Current Events, Organized Crime

Since the days of Capone, Cook County’s historical status as a corrupt institution has been common knowledge the world over. In the years since prohibition, the federal government has waged an ongoing war against the Italian-American mafia, and it might seem that this once powerful underworld agency is dead or dying. With this in mind, some might believe that Cook County’s reputation for mobbed-up mischief and political payoffs is simply a stigma retained from those halcyon days when Syndicate heavyweights ruled a gangland empire that stretched from Chicago to Los Angeles from the safety of their bought and paid for Chicago roost.

Anyone who has read my work, or the work of countless other brave and intrepid souls who dare to shine a light on the wretched inner workings of Cook County’s byzantine cuckoo clock of corruption, will know that this is simply not true. While the manipulation of these sinister criminals might be of a more subtle variety than the Tommy Gun blasting thugs of the bloodthirsty Al Capone or the ostentatious Sam Giancana, their power is still heavily entrenched in city, county and state politics.

Take, for example, the case of Cook County Judge Jill Cerone-Marisie. In her time on the bench she has committed several grievous violations of her oath as a minister of justice, and I think it is high time that the rest of the world knows about it.

Cook County, still crippled by corruption in the halls of justice.

Jill Cerone-Marisie once served as a longtime corporate officer of Erbacci & Cerone, a law-firm that, according to a federal investigation, was found to have deep-rooted connections to some of the most powerful organized crime lords in American history, including the infamous Chicago Outfit. A federal investigation initially launched by the Reagan Administration served as the mechanism that discovered and acknowledged this law firm’s longstanding ties to organized crime. These findings were enough for the government to prohibit the wild and woolly bunch known as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from maintaining their longstanding business relations with Erbacci & Cerone.

Working for less infamous institutions has ruined the careers of far more promising attorneys, but in the corrupt land of Cook County, Cerone-Marisie’s ties to this mobbed-up law firm has had no effect on her ability to become a judge.

A while back I wrote an article concerned with a trial involving a man named Marc Prosperi, who was well connected to Jill and her family. Cerone-Marisie, despite having previously represented Prosperi in court as his lawyer, failed to recuse herself from the case. Luckily for Her Honor, the case involving Marc entailed a plea of guilty by the defendant, which provides a reasonable argument for Cerone-Marisie to raise in order to fend off any scrutiny over the suspicious courtroom circumstances that I reported.

While I did not hold out much hope for some kind of official censure for Her Honor concerning this one matter, reporting on this instance of Cook County insider dealing has encouraged others to come to me with more stories about Judge Jill Cerone-Marisie. In the matter that I am addressing today, any reasonable person would quickly identify that Cerone-Marisie most likely cooked her own goose, and with the help of Mariano’s Fresh Market.

This matter involves a 2010 shop-lifting case at the grand opening of the Mariano’s Fresh Market store in Arlington Heights, Illinois. I recently discussed the matter with members of the accused’s family for the second time in the last 12-months. The defendant, who we will call Jane Doe in order to avoid further smearing her good name, appeared in front of Cook County Judge Jill Cerone-Marisie in a bench trial.

It was my wish to protect the defendant from any backlash by helping her keep a low profile until her court sentence had a chance to expire. This is why I am covering this story one-year later. Now that she is no longer under the direct jurisdiction of Judge Cerone-Marisie, everyone involved feels a little more comfortable seeking justice and apprising the public of Her Honor’s bewildering, unexplainable, and some would say illegal, actions.

On Friday, February 4, 2011, Jane Doe walked into Cook County, Illinois’ Third Municipal District Courthouse. The defendant came into the appointed courtroom without even an inkling of knowledge concerning the forces she was about to tangle with. Doe’s attorney convinced her that the case against her was very weak. After reading the trial transcript, which I have gone through with a fine-toothed comb, I feel that her defense attorney was correct. The prosecution’s case appeared nearly impossible to win.

This optimistic opinion held by the defense was made plainly evident in their opening statement. Here the attorney described the grocery store’s security guards as “over-aggressive” and “completely out-of-line,” telegraphing, in my opinion, an impending false arrest lawsuit. Of course such a suit could only be pursued after the speedy resolution of the current case but, given the prosecution’s utter lack of evidence, an acquittal, or even an outright dismissal, of the case would surely be coming.

So when Judge Jill Cerone-Marisie banged her gavel and brought the court into session, Jane Doe was confident the whole situation would be sorted out with a minimum of fuss. However, it quickly became clear that evidence would not be necessary for the prosecution to obtain a finding of guilty in this court.

In my exhaustive evaluation of the court transcripts, I counted four different interruptions by Judge Cerone-Marisie in the middle of the trial, where it appeared to me that she examined or lead prosecution witnesses in order to get a desired statement or sentiment expressed. A judge conducting herself this way is extremely bizarre.

Despite these efforts to get the witnesses to say what she wanted, there was one man who still managed to let it slip that charging Doe with theft should have been impossible. A key prosecution witness testified under oath that the merchandise that was considered stolen was not in the defendant’s possession when she left the store.

How could it be feasible, with the outright confession that Jane Doe did not leave the store with the offending item, that she would be found guilty of shoplifting?

This is, evidently, not a problem Her Honor has any trouble ignoring.

In fact, Judge Cerone-Marisie explained in her own words when she rendered the guilty verdict that, “I know there is some inconsistencies or discrepancies with what Officer Barnes says or who told him what…” She is forced to admit there is no actual evidence, either eye-witness testimony or surveillance recording, that shows Doe took the offending item out of the store. Despite this glaring omission, Judge Cerone-Marisie finds no problem in declaring Jane Doe guilty.

I know that horrible, sinking feeling in the gut which comes with being accused of doing something you did not do. I can only imagine how that feeling was magnified for Jane Doe by hearing a judge, a bastion of the law and order that allows our great society to thrive, blatantly admit there was no evidence against her, yet still hand down a finding of guilty.

How could this have gone so wrong? What Jane Doe (and hopefully her attorney) did not know was that, with all likelihood, the die was already cast against her, all in the name of being “neighborly.”

Nina Di Frisco Mariano, who is related by marriage to the family who runs the grocery store in question, is a longtime friend and neighbor of Judge Cerone-Marisie. If Jane Doe was allowed to walk on the trumped up charges leveled against her, then the Mariano family could be sucked into the false arrest lawsuit the defense was already ginning up. For reasons easy to grasp, such an eventuality would be highly undesirable.

I was able to discover the neighbor connection quickly, largely thanks to the work of one of Chicago’s greatest and most fearless reporters, Carol Marin. You see, a while back Marin wrote a negative article about the election of Cerone-Marisie to her judge’s seat, and was roundly accosted in a letter by Nina Di Frisco Mariano. Nina Di Frisco Mariano is the wife of Robert Mariano, a purported officer of and shareholder in Mariano’s Fresh Market.

So, even if all of her misconduct during the trial could be excused, Judge Cerone-Marisie’s personal ties with members of the Mariano family should have automatically forced her to recuse herself from Jane Doe’s case. This violation is such a fundamental insult to the judicial process it is difficult to even think about, let alone witness time after time. How can any of us walk into a court room and expect a fair trial when there is the possibility that the judge might already have formed an opinion about the case before even one iota of evidence has been presented? If this is acceptable behavior for the protectors of our laws, our primary defenders against the tyranny of heavy-handed governments and powerful, corrupt citizens who believe they can buy the truth, how can the great experiment of democracy ever expect to survive?

We must fight to keep people who would bend justice to their needs out of power, and we must start today. I implore anyone who feels they have suffered unfairly as a result of Judge Cerone Marisie’s misconduct to share their stories. I am very knowledgeable on the Cerone-Marisie connections and I should be able to shed light on various matters for you in the interest of justice. Please be advised that any criminal acts must be immediately reported to law enforcement. American News Post will issue cash rewards for information that leads to disciplinary and/or criminal action against Judge Jill Cerone-Marisie. We as a community must not look the other way when public officials abuse their positions and violate the public’s trust in order to serve and protect their friends and neighbors at the cost of compromising justice. Please forward any relevant data to me at jfosco@americannewspost.com.

In closing, I would like to offer the following note to a man who, today, could do something about Judge Cerone-Marisie:

Attention Cook County Chief Judge Timothy C. Evans,
Please remove Judge Jill Cerone Marisie from her courtroom and find a safe place for her in an office somewhere doing paperwork. Thank you.
Sincerely,
/s/ Joseph Fosco, on behalf of many outraged Cook County residents

Postscript

After finishing this article, another piece of interesting information happened to come my way. It seems that Nina Di Frisco Mariano is very closely related to Dominic Di Frisco, a longtime activist against the defamation of Italian-Americans.

It is true that Americans of Italian descent have suffered because of the actions of an inconsequentially small minority of murders and thieves. I fully back the initiative to reclaim our heritage and good name from the claws of these active criminals. I resoundingly join Dominic in saying that judging a whole group by the actions of a few is a gross violation of the principals upon which this great nation was founded. Italian-Americans should never be ashamed of their rich cultural heritage.

So it is in this vein that I appeal to Dominic to please approach his wayward relative, Nina. Her association with corrupt government officials of Italian descent, like Judge Cerone-Marisie, only perpetrates the negative stigma under which we have so long suffered.

Furthermore, I implore Dominic himself to cease his association with Cerone-Marisie’s father, which has been carried out via various American-Italian organizations located in and around Chicago, Illinois for the past few decades. Surely Dominic can recognize that the man who is a partner in a law firm recognized by the federal government as entrenched in Outfit politics is not the sort of fellow he should be seen rubbing elbows with.

Author’s note:
Media and other relevant agencies, please contact me for the identification of the defendant and copy of the official court transcript. However, if you wish to obtain said information independently, please be aware that the case number is 10 MC3 004271 and the official court reporter is Ellen Piccony (Ellen now works in Cook County’s Juvenile Division).

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Tags: Acquittal, al capone, Arlington Heights, attorney, Carol Marin, chicago outfit, cook county, corruption, defense attorney, Dominic Di Frisco, jack cerone, jackie cerone, jfosco@americannewspost.com, jill cerone, Jill Cerone-Marisie, joe fosco, joey fosco, joseph fosco, Los Angeles, marc prosperi, Mariano's Fresh Market store, Nina Di Frisco Mariano, nina mariano, Reagan Administration, Robert Mariano, sam giancana, Syndicate