Robert Almodovar was sitting in a courtroom before Judge Peggy Chiampas last October when a deputy sheriff approached him and asked if he had a cell phone with him.
Thus began a nine-month period of exile from the Leicester criminal courthouse where Almodóvar worked as a law clerk after spending more than twenty years in prison for a double murder he did not commit.
Speaking to the deputy, Almodovar said he believed he was allowed to have a phone in the building because he was there as a law clerk, but he offered to hide the phone in a basement closet.
Almodovar said he was about to do so when Chiambas started shouting at the deputy from the bench, “Bring him, bring him, bring him.”
While the general public is prohibited from bringing a mobile phone into the Lilongwe Criminal Court by order of the Chief Justice, lawyers, police officers, members of the media, court staff and many others who have business there are allowed to keep their phones.
A list on the court's website indicates that “certified attorneys' staff” are among them.
But Chiampas ordered Almodovar, according to a court transcript of the Oct. 4 hearing, “Let me have your phone, please. Sit down and do not leave the courtroom. If you leave the courtroom, sir, I will hold you directly in contempt of court.”
In an interview with the Sun-Times on Thursday, Almodovar said: “I was sweating profusely, I was scared. I didn’t want to go back to jail again.”
Before becoming a law clerk, Almodóvar was sentenced to life in prison for a double murder conviction and spent 23 years behind bars before his conviction was overturned. He was acquitted in 2018.
Almodóvar said he waited four hours, fearing he would be put in jail, before Chiambas spoke to him again.
Deputy District Attorney Tracy Nelson told the judge she became “concerned” because Almodovar said he was there to “observe” the public hearing but did not have a case on the court docket.
The deputy said someone told her he had a phone, but she did not say she saw him use it, according to court records.
“Let me tell you what my options are,” Chiampas told Almodovar, adding that she “could hold you in direct contempt of court and sentence you to six months in the Cook County Department of Corrections for violating an order that was established in their building.”
Or, as the judge offered, Almodovar could “voluntarily open your phone so they can check to make sure you’re not taking any pictures… and not posting anything on social media about anything in this building or in this courtroom.”
Almodóvar, who said he did not commit any of the acts but felt he had no choice but to refuse the judge, allowed his phone to be searched. The deputy said she found “no photos, videos or social media stories on his phone,” according to the transcript.
However, Chiampas said she would bar him from entering the courtroom.
“If you come to this building again… I will give you, sir, the maximum of six months. Do you understand what I’m saying?” The judge later explained to another lawyer that Almodóvar was barred “unless he has a (criminal) case or is summoned to appear or has prior approval from the court,” according to the transcript.
It was not part of any case file, and Almodovar said he was refused a copy when a deputy returned his phone to him after copying its contents.
Chiampas lifted the ban on Thursday after months of controversy over a request by Almodovar's lawyer to overturn the judge's “illegal” order.
“The order is overturned and the case is dismissed,” Chiampas told his lawyer, Steve Greenberg, sternly, without looking up from his seat. She offered no explanation.
Robert Almodovar Jr. hugs his relatives after being released from prison in April 2017 after serving 23 years behind bars.
Andy Grimm for the Sun-Times
“It was an abuse of power,” said civil rights attorney Jennifer Bonjean, who represented Almodovar in his wrongful conviction case and now employs him as a writer. “Being a judge doesn’t mean you get to make your own rules,” she said.
Bongin is separately suing Chiampas over alleged misconduct by a judge, police officers and prosecutors in the case of two men previously charged with killing an off-duty Chicago police officer.
Almodovar said he was considering filing a complaint with the state's judicial oversight body. “I felt like she was bossy. How could she do this?” he said.
Almodóvar said that as a legal clerk, he files documents in court and acts as an assistant to Bonjan. He also helps others who have been acquitted, like him, deal with the world after their release.
“How do I get an ID card, and stuff like that,” he said. “When I first got out, it took me months.”
In June, Judge Tim Evans referred a case involving another judge to the Judicial Inquiry Board, which ordered a lawyer detained after he got into an argument with her during a hearing. The deputy sheriff handcuffed the lawyer, who works for a prominent downtown law firm, and briefly detained him.
A spokesman for Evans said the chief judge did not have time to respond to questions from the Sun-Times on Thursday, but offered to do an interview next week.
The Leighton Criminal Court has a strict ban on electronic devices, which is not in place in other county courts.
The court claimed on its website that the ban was aimed at preventing people from “misusing mobile phones by filming witnesses and jurors in courtrooms where criminal cases are being heard.”
In recent years, the state Supreme Court has pushed courts to allow people to keep their devices inside court buildings.
In 2022, a Supreme Court-approved policy found that such devices “have become essential to society and are invaluable personal and commercial tools,” and that such prohibitions “impede equal access to justice and impose unfair burdens on individuals who already face significant barriers to accessing the courts.”
Cell phone use is common in court, with lawyers, police officers and reporters regularly seen in courtrooms using phones to pass the time between hearings and to do work during court calls that can last for hours.
Most judges at Leighton Court allow journalists to use computers to take notes, but a growing number of judges in the past year have told deputies in courtrooms that journalists can no longer do so after a member of a television news station was seen taking a photo during a hearing.
But there are concerns among reporters about judges using their ability to ban media outlets from using electronic devices as punishment for coverage they find unfavorable.
For example, Judge Angela Petrone stopped the media from using electronic devices in the courtroom to take notes after she made comments criticizing media coverage of her May decision to seal records in a high-profile case.
