Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke is keeping a controversial campaign pledge to get tough on people accused of possessing machine guns, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis has found.
Soon after taking office Dec. 1, O’Neill Burke said her prosecutors would seek pretrial detention for anyone charged with possession of a machine gun or an extended magazine — asking judges to keep them in jail while they await trial.
She pointed to a “15-fold” increase in recoveries of weapons with illegal machine-gun conversion devices since 2019 in Chicago. Forty of the devices had been recovered in 2019. That figure rose to 604 in 2024, according to federal statistics.
The Sun-Times examined detention decisions involving machine-gun cases since the state’s Pre-Trial Fairness Act took effect in 2023. That included 125 cases filed by former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s prosecutors and 138 under O’Neill Burke.
Under Foxx, prosecutors sought detention in 78% of the cases in which a machine-gun charge was the most serious one. Judges approved 41% of those requests.
That was between Sept. 18, 2023, when the state’s Pre-Trial Fairness Act — which eliminated cash bail in Illinois and set up a process in which judges decide whether someone should stay in jail until trial based on their potential danger to the community — took effect, and Dec. 1, 2024. That was when O’Neill Burke was sworn in to succeed Foxx, who didn’t seek re-election after two terms as state’s attorney.
From Dec. 1, 2024 to Sept. 1, O’Neill Burke’s prosecutors sought detention in 97% of machine-gun cases. Judges granted their requests more than 76% of the time.
O’Neill Burke is directing her prosecutors to seek pretrial jail for everyone charged with having devices that illegally turn handguns into automatic firearms.
“It’s her position that individuals who are walking in the streets with that kind of weaponry are not doing it for self-protection,” says Yvette Loizon, chief of policy for O’Neill Burke’s office. “Those weapons are insanely dangerous.”
Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell Jr. says it’s unfair to routinely hold people in jail pending trial on those charges. He says many people are carrying those weapons to defend themselves — not to use them “offensively.” And those are the weapons that typically are available on the street, where people who don’t have a state permit must go to buy a gun to protect themselves, he says.
“Maybe they have been shot, their family member has been shot,” Mitchell says. “Blanket policies are really dangerous for the administration of justice.”
Over the past five years, automatic weapons have become a growing problem in Chicago. Tiny devices known as “switches” are attached to handguns — usually Glocks — to cheaply, easily and illegally convert them into automatic weapons that can fire dozens of bullets in seconds. Automatic handguns have been used repeatedly in mass shootings in Chicago.
In 2023, Gov. JB Pritzker signed a law outlawing switches and also extended magazines, which can hold dozens of bullets. Switches already were illegal under federal law, which classifies the devices as machine guns even on their own, without being attached to a gun.
In June, O’Neill Burke’s office hosted a national gathering of prosecutors to discuss stopping the proliferation of switches, many of which are created with 3D printers or shipped from China under the guise of being other kinds of household devices.
At the gathering, federal agents fired switch-equipped Glocks to demonstrate their firepower.
“I’ve been a prosecutor for a long time,” Loizon says. “I’ve been around the criminal justice system for a very long time. I will tell you that watching those guns being shot live literally took my breath away.
“If this policy is going to deter even one person from carrying an MCD” — a machine-gun conversion device — “then that’s wonderful,” she says. “It’s important we implement a policy that ensures public safety.”
O’Neill Burke has assigned five investigators to dig into the background of anyone arrested so prosecutors can give judges a full picture of whether those arrested should be detained until trial, Loizon says.
“They make a really comprehensive presentation to the court,” she says. “And so I think that we are seeing more detentions. But we’re seeing them because we are giving judges more comprehensive information so that they can make informed decisions on whether a person should or should not be detained.”
Under O’Neill Burke’s policy, rank-and-file prosecutors also aren’t allowed to reduce a machine-gun or extended-magazine charge to a lower-level offense unless they obtain permission from a supervisor.
“If the defense attorney is requesting that that case be pled down to a lesser charge for some reason, that is what the policy is seeking to avoid,” Loizon says.
Prosecutors still can enter into plea negotiations in cases involving machine guns and extended magazines.
Though O’Neill Burke’s office is seeking detention in nearly every machine-gun case, that’s not the case for a range of other types of offenses. Her prosecutors have asked for detention in fewer than 20% of the thousands of criminal cases they’ve filed — similar to what was happening under Foxx.
And the get-tough policy doesn’t apply to all gun cases.
O’Neill Burke even championed a law that allows people to apply for a state gun permit if they participate in a court-approved diversion program for first-time gun-possession offenses — those that don’t involve a machine gun or extended magazine. That law takes effect Jan. 1.
“We treat gun licensing issues for those who have demonstrated a commitment to following the law very differently from reckless offenders who engage in violent crime,” O’Neill Burke said in a written statement the law about last month.
Mitchell says there’s a contradiction between the blanket get-tough policy in some gun cases and a compassionate approach in others. He says one of the dangers of seeking pretrial detention for all who are accused of possessing a machine gun is that they’re far more likely to plead guilty than someone awaiting trial at home.
“It’s the dark, dirty secret of the criminal law system,” he says.
And once they have a felony conviction on their record, chances of getting a decent job plummet, Mitchell says.
“I want to do all that we can with all this money that we’re spending to make sure this person stays out of the criminal legal system so they don’t go breaking into our cars, so they don’t go out robbing,” Mitchell says. “Oftentimes, when we do like incarceration first, we reduce our chances of making sure that person gets it right the next time.”
Margaret Armalas, a supervisor in the public defender’s office, says prosecutors rarely budge on reducing charges for people in cases in which a gun is equipped with a laser sight, a switch, an extended magazine or some other kind of illegal attachment.
“It’s much more difficult in all gun cases, in my experience, including the ones without the attachments, but then it is insanely difficult if there’s any type of attachment,” says Armalas, who works in the criminal courthouse at 26th Street and California Avenue.
“I have clients that are very clearly people who have the gun for protection — like people with no history of being arrested, have gone to college, have a family, have a great career — and it’s obvious they’re not someone who intended to use the gun violently,” Armalas says. “The state’s attorney is now inherently treating them like a person who intends to go out and murder somebody.”
Some judges seem uncomfortable with the consequences of O’Neill Burke’s strict policy on machine guns and extended magazines, sources tell the Sun-Times.
In June, Cook County Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesel sentenced an 18-year-old who pleaded guilty to having a gun with an extended magazine. He didn’t go to prison for long because his sentence amounted to the nearly five months he’d spent in jail. But now he’s got a felony on his record.
Assistant Public Defender Patrick Shine told the judge in that case that prosecutors “don’t give probation or anything less for a first-time weapons offender if there is an aggravating factor, being an extended magazine. Otherwise, this is not what we would be seeking. But their office has been very clear about their position.”
Kuriakos Ciesel said in court that she was aware of O’Neill Burke’s gun policy. She explained to the teenager that he would have to list his felony on most job applications and might get rejected from public housing one day because of his conviction.
And she warned him, “You’re on a path of destruction.”
Then, according to a transcript of the hearing, she said, “I am saddened that an 18-year-old with no background is standing before me pleading guilty to a felony conviction that is going on his record that’s now going to affect this young, emerging adult going forward.”