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Head west about 10 miles from downtown Chicago along North Avenue and you travel straight into all-too-vivid evidence of the American Dream gone sour. Here it's easy to find clusters of abandoned buildings that have become dens of drug abuse. Nearby street corners in the West Side neighborhoods of Austin, Garfield Park and Lawndale lure visitors from the western suburbs looking for heroin and crack.

Efforts to clean up these pockets of narcotics trade left residents angry. Arrests for buying and selling drugs did little to curb demand. Nor did occasional community "smoke-outs," when residents set up barbecues and lawn chairs on street corners frequented by pushers. Dealers simply moved business elsewhere. "We shut down the first drug house in this area in 1992, but it's kind of like pulling weeds: They just pop up somewhere else," says Allen Hailey of the Northwest Austin Council, a community action group. "We need to try to reduce demand for drugs first."

Looking to stem demand by targeting newer drug users, the council three years ago started advocating the establishment of a "drug court," an increasingly popular tool for fighting drug abuse in cities throughout the country. Drug courts offer a carrot - and-stick approach to nonviolent people arrested on drug-related charges. In some models, especially those dealing with habitual offenders, the "carrot" is the chance to avoid prison by undergoing supervised treatment. Others offer first-time offenders the chance to avoid prosecution and expunge their records.

At the West Side Community Drug Court, which opened last January in two courtrooms and is coordinated by Hailey of the Northwest Austin Council, the state's attorney's office offers first-time offenders arrested on misdemeanor drug-related charges a three-week, court-supervised program of basic treatment and education. Defendants who elect to take part are referred to Hailey, who sits in court while it is in session and gives participants the details of drug education programs they must complete to have their original offenses removed from their records; those who fail have their cases prosecuted.

Since the first drug court was set up in Dade County, Fla., in 1989, at least 200 such courts have been established, while another 100 are planned, according to Drug Strategies, a Washington, D.C.- based non- profit group that has studied this phenomenon. Some supporters have gone so far as to label drug courts among the most significant reforms in America's criminal justice system in the last 50 years.

"It's a pretty compelling offer for first-time offenders to have the offense expunged," says Hailey, who wrote the United Way grant proposal that secured much of the funding for the West Side Community Drug Court's treatment program. "It's a way for them to continue to have a clean record."

In contrast to their traditional adversarial roles, defense attorneys and prosecutors in drug courts work in tandem, along with judges and treatment providers, to convince offenders to address their substance abuse through supervised treatment programs, he says.

The traditional road through the judicial system doesn't address underlying causes of substance abuse, says Margaret Beaudry, research director of Drug Strategies. "Now we've got a way to target people who need the help and give them a powerful incentive to get that help. For first-time offenders, even a misdemeanor charge is a pretty serious thing. There's a good chance that with treatment and education they may stop using drugs." During the nine months after the West Side Community Drug Court opened, 49 of 78 participants "graduated" and were eligible to have their charges dropped and their records purged. Hailey says this nearly 63 percent completion rate is encouraging. According to a study by the U.S. Department of Justice, drug court programs are experiencing a significant reduction in recidivism among drug court participants: As low as 4 percent for graduates, compared to at least 45 percent among defendants convicted of drug possession. Such statistics appeal to prosecutors, Beaudry says. "State's attorneys like drug courts because first-time offenders who go through them likely won't come back and clog up the courts."

In fact, crowded court dockets generally are the impetus for a drug court. But for the West Side court, the motivation was different. "Ours is pretty unique in that it's a neighborhood model," Hailey says. "In other jurisdictions it'll usually come from the top down, maybe from the chief judge saying the courts are backlogged. The whole planning process here came from the community. It boiled from the bottom up."

For graduate Tanya Harris of Lawndale, who was arrested in May for trying to buy crack cocaine, the

18/ November 1997 Illinois Issues

program has offered an opportunity to turn a corner.

"I've been using for three years, but I'd been hiding it from everyone," says the 24-year-old mother of two. "When I was arrested, I knew I couldn't hide it anymore. I knew I had to get off. Going through the treatment program they offered was a way of helping me stay away from drugs, but also was a way of clearing my conscience." Jennifer Halperin, formerly Illinois Issues' Statehouse bureau chief, is a free-lance writer and a copy editor at The Columbus Dispatch in Ohio.

Fourteen years ago, Willie Enoch was convicted of a simple, savage crime: barging into a Peoria woman's apartment, tying her up and hacking her to death. He was quickly caught, convicted and sentenced to die. By rights, he should have been forgotten long ago by everyone but lawyers and the victim's family. But Enoch and the Illinois legal system are not finished with each other.

Enoch's case was one of several that inspired a new state law making it easier for prisoners to seek DNA tests that might set them free. His case also illustrates that law's limitations.

First things first. Enoch was convicted in 1983 of murdering 24-year-old Armanda Burns. The evidence against him was the testimony of Burns' boyfriend, who said he saw Enoch leave the victim's apartment with his hands wrapped in a shirt; a bloody shirt that was found nearby that seemed to be Enoch's; and the testimony of Enoch's girlfriend that he confessed and made her burn a pair of his pants.

Late last year, with Enoch's execution date drawing near, his attorneys began calling for genetic testing of the evidence, which was not possible at the time of his conviction. But just wanting the tests didn't give Enoch any legal right to them. He got them only because Peoria County State's Attorney Kevin Lyons reluctantly agreed to support his request.

That's where the new law comes in. Liberal law professors and pro-death penalty legislators agreed common sense suggests making sure people are guilty before executing them. They came up with legislation, which was approved overwhelmingly and signed by the governor in July, that lets prisoners ask the court for DNA tests of evidence used against them.

The law's drafters may have been thinking of Enoch, but it seems nothing they did will help him. In fact, two men who helped write the law say it may apply to only a few dozen of the state's 39,000 inmates because of several strict requirements:

• evidence, such as blood or semen, that was used at trial and has been properly preserved so it can be tested;

• a case in which the defendant went to trial instead of pleading guilty;

• a case that centers on the identity of the perpetrator;

• evidence that can conclusively , clear a defendant, not just create doubt.

Enoch appears to fail parts of that test. Most of the items Enoch's attorneys wanted to examine — a drop of blood found on his shoe, for instance, or semen found in the victim's underwear — were not used in Enoch's trial. More important, if someone else's DNA had turned up on the bloody shirt, it could have meant the shirt was unconnected to the crime. Besides, there was other evidence against him. Enoch would fail the conclusiveproof test, although his attorney says she has not given up looking for a way the law can be applied to his case.

Northwestern University law professor Lawrence Marshall, who helped draft the testing law, says few crimes other than rape and murder involve DNA evidence. And most defendants plead guilty, ruling out more cases.

"I don't think we're talking about hundreds. We're probably talking in the dozens or scores," Marshall says.

He cites another reason to think the number of testing cases will be very low: "Except in very, very rare situations, defendants who are guilty are going to stay away from this as much as humanly possible."

But Enoch's case seems to belie that argument. The results of Enoch's test pointed directly at him as the killer. Yet that did not settle the matter. His attorney, Shari Engelken, questioned the accuracy of the tests. She is asking the court for permission to examine the raw test data, an effort to find something to justify further tests.

Some wrongly convicted people will be freed by the testing — people like the Ford Heights Four, who spent 18 years in prison for a double murder they didn't commit. But if Enoch's case is any guide, unfavorable results won't end appeals. And the law does not address who should do the testing or to what standards.

The law does contain a provision to discourage inmates from filing frivolous motions for testing. Those who do could stay in prison longer by losing 180 days of "good time."

But again Enoch's case raises questions. Rep. Peter Roskam, a Wheaton Republican who sponsored the testing law, says "frivolous" means cases such as Enoch's where the test results suggest the prisoner is, in fact, guilty. Marshall, however, says his view of frivolity is repeated requests for testing in cases that already have been settled.

The philosophy of the testing law is clear: "It's either going to free the innocent or confirm the guilt of the prisoner. So either way it's a good outcome for society" is the way Greg O'Reilly of the Cook County public defender's office puts it. But Enoch's case demonstrates that the law's impact may not be quite so simple. �

Christopher Wills reports for The Associated Press from Peoria.

Illinois Issues November 1997 / 19