Madigan judge has experience with Shakespeare, Michael Jordan — and law used to target ex-House speaker

When he introduced John “Jack” Blakey to fellow legislators 10 years ago, US Sen. Mark Kirk wasted no time telling them Blakey’s father “wrote the RICO statute” — the racketeering law famously used to target mobsters, street gangs and other forms of organized crime.

“If there is any state in the union that needs experts on RICO, it is Illinois,” the North Shore Republican said as he sought confirmation for Blakey as a federal district court judge in 2014.

Kirk likely didn’t know it at the time, but an intense FBI investigation had already begun that would lead to one of the most significant racketeering prosecutions in Illinois history: the case against former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan.

That case happens to be headed to trial Tuesday before Blakey, 59, the RICO expert who’s now accumulated a decade of experience on the bench. He’s presided over challenges to the Obama Presidential Center, the criminal trial of murderous street gang members, a mercy bid from Gangster Disciples founder Larry Hoover, and a civil trial involving Michael Jordan.

Potential Madigan jurors are expected only to fill out written questionnaires Tuesday, with in-court interviews not set to begin until Wednesday.

Once it gets rolling, the Madigan trial will be Blakey’s most prominent to date — a case that upended and reshaped Chicago politics. Among those caught in the crossfire have been former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, longtime Madigan aide Tim Mapes, ex-state Rep. Edward “Eddie” Acevedo and imprisoned former Ald. Edward M. Burke.

Madigan has long been at the center of the probe, though. And when a grand jury finally handed up a racketeering indictment against the powerful Southwest Side Democrat in March 2022, the case went to Blakey, the former prosecutor nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama.

“He loves the law,” said Tom Biesty, a retired Cook County prosecutor who once worked alongside Blakey. “He’s going to be really fair.”

Blakey is no stranger to high-profile cases

Racketeering prosecutions target organized criminal enterprises. Madigan, for example, is accused of heading an enterprise made up of his public office, the 13th Ward Democratic Organization and his law firm. The feds say it was designed to illegally enhance Madigan’s political power and generate income for his allies.

It’s often noted that Blakey’s father, G. Robert Blakey, wrote the law under which Madigan is being prosecuted. But the judge has also established himself as an authority on the subject.

In 2011, Judge Blakey urged passage of Illinois’ own racketeering law, explaining to the House Judiciary Committee how it would allow state prosecutors to attack the structure of criminal street gangs, rather than prosecuting individual crimes alone.

“Gang crime is not an isolated incident,” he said then. “And it can’t be pursued as isolated incidents.”

John Blakey also happens to be “an experienced Madigan judge has firm grasp of law used to target mobsters, street gangs — and now the ex-house speakeran actor who even performed in London,” Kirk noted in 2014. That may seem like an unusual background for a judge, but Blakey has said it seemed “like a seamless transition” to move from theater to law.

“Arguing in front of a jury or arguing in front of a judge, whether it’s a legal principle or a set of disputed facts, you have to have the power of language and understand the power of a strong narrative,” John Blakey said in 2012 “What are the issues?” What is the story?”

Blakey hails from South Bend, Indiana, home of his alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, where his father works as a professor. Recently, Judge Blakey promised lawyers in the Madigan case he’d spend a weekend with their legal briefs — “after the Notre Dame game, obviously.”

He wound up in Chicago after college, working as a federal and state prosecutor.

He spent the last five years of his career as a prosecutor serving as chief of the special prosecutions bureau under then-Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez. Along the way, he led the prosecution of three men who were the first in Chicago to be charged as terrorists under a state law for allegedly plotting violent attacks during the 2012 NATO Summit here.

Biesty, a Cook County prosecutor from 1991 until 2017, said he met John Blakey during that phase of the judge’s career. Biesty said Blakey was “innovative” and “had a lot of great ideas,” setting up a human trafficking unit, pursuing the state racketeering law and prosecuting the county’s first racketeering trial.

“Obviously his dad was a legend, but he was real up on it, on his own,” Biesty said of Blakey’s knowledge of the law.

Brian Church, Jared Chase and Brent Betterly were acquitted of the terrorism counts but convicted on less serious charges following a trial in 2014. The evidence and verdict prompted criticism of Alvarez for overreaching.

However, John Blakey was nominated for his seat on the federal bench that same year. The following summer, he found himself presiding over a completely different high-profile trial — involving basketball superstar Jordan.

Jordan had sued the now-defunct grocery chain Dominick’s over an ad that appeared in a 2009 limited-edition issue of Sports Illustrated published to commemorate Jordan’s induction into basketball’s hall of fame. The Dominick’s ad congratulated Jordan and used his name and number “23.” Jordan accused the grocer of using his name without permission.

Jordan attended the trial and even testified in Judge Blakey’s courtroom, eventually securing an $8.9 million verdict. The judge denied a request for “special accommodations” for Jordan after his attorney asked that he be allowed to use an underground entrance to the Dirksen Federal Courthouse.

“All litigants stand equal before the law,” said Judge Blakey, who separately referred to Jordan as a “former Chicago Bull, Birmingham Baron and ‘Space Jam’ star.”

The experience means Madigan will hardly be the most high-profile individual to step foot in the judge’s courtroom, even if Jordan’s dispute over a magazine ad didn’t carry the same gravitas as the criminal trial of one of the most significant politicians in Illinois history.

Another notable Illinois politician had his own connection to a pair of cases handled by Blakey. The judge presided over two lawsuits that challenged the Obama Presidential Center now under construction in Jackson Park.

When he tossed the first case in 2019, Judge Blakey referenced the first American in space when he declared “there should be no delay in construction.”

“As Alan Shepard put it in 1961, light this candle,” the judge said.

Judge Blakey presided last year over the trial of three members of the Goonie Boss street gang, which had been tied to 10 murders across 30 months. And just last month, while considering a sentencing break for the Gangster Disciples kingpin Hoover, the judge made headlines when he directly challenged Hoover’s defense attorney.

“How many murders is he responsible for?” Blakey asked about Hoover.

The attorney has yet to answer, and the judge has yet to rule.

Face-to-face with Madigan

Madigan and the judge have already come face-to-face in Blakey’s courtroom multiple times. Madigan made his first appearance as a criminal defendant back in January. That’s when the former speaker, his defense attorneys and prosecutors gathered to figure out how to move forward after the US Supreme Court picked up a case that threatened to reshape Madigan’s.

During the hearing, Judge Blakey referred to Madigan not with the formal title of “speaker” but as “Mr. Madigan” and “the defendant.” He also called Madigan to a courtroom podium to make sure Madigan did not object to delaying his trial until the Supreme Court ruled.

The judge recalled the days when his small children would leave Lego blocks for him to step on in the dark. He told the lawyers he feared the Supreme Court would “give us a Lego” if they decided to move forward with Madigan’s trial last April, as originally scheduled.

I have stressed the time that would be wasted not only by the lawyers — but by the jurors.

“To sit for two months, take time out of their lives, to lose money, to lose their ability to maintain their business or be with their families, and then have them do that for nothing, that’s not fair to them either,” Judge Blakey said.

The jurors, he said, “are the unsung heroes of the process.”