In 2021, the number of people in Illinois killed from acts of domestic violence was growing at an alarming pace, and state legislators acted with a sense of urgency.
In a near-unanimous vote, they passed legislation designed to blunt the trend. The state would establish a network of panels to review killings related to domestic violence and identify whether existing strategies for preventing them fell short.
But since then the state has made only meager progress in implementing the plans laid out in that law, and the number of domestic violence killings continues to increase.
The bill called for building the network over six years, but nearly four years after Gov. JB Pritzker signed it, only seven of the state’s 102 counties have helped establish fatality case review teams.
The first reviews began only late last year, and key deadlines have been missed. An initial report of statewide policy recommendations based on reviews by the panels was expected to be delivered to lawmakers in April 2024. But that has yet to happen.
The most glaring absence from the program is Cook County, which is home to Chicago and accounts for nearly 40% of the state’s population. Discussions between organizers of the initiative and agencies that could take charge of a local review panel in the county have failed to yield a commitment.
People familiar with the effort say a lack of funding and a gap in leadership have slowed the initiative’s progress. The law does not provide money to staff the local review panels, hampering recruitment of people to serve. Moreover, a top state administrator in charge of developing the network abruptly left the project and was only recently replaced.
Illinois Sen. Celina Villanueva, one of several sponsors of the bill creating the initiative, acknowledged the delays but expressed confidence in the overall direction. “My hope is that once everything is fully established, that it’s a strong working mechanism to be able to address the larger issues of why we passed this bill to begin with,” she said.
Cristin Evans, spokesperson for the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, the state agency that oversees the review effort, said that “the amount of time it has taken for teams to conduct their first review is not unexpected given the structure and complexity of the initiative.”
The current teams are on track to complete a minimum of two cases in 2025, she added.
Recent killings underscore the urgency of addressing breakdowns in the systems designed to protect people from domestic violence. In November, Chicago police found Lacramioara Beldie stabbed to death in an apparent murder-suicide at the hands of her estranged husband, Constantin. Court records that surfaced after Beldie’s death detailed a disturbing timeline.
Six weeks before he allegedly killed his wife, Constantin Beldie appeared inside a Cook County court to face accusations he’d assaulted and held her inside a car against her will. Prosecutors did seek to detain Beldie ahead of his trial over the incident but failed to submit evidence of his alleged prior abuse. Judge Thomas E. Nowinski denied the state’s petition, noting that state prosecutors had failed to establish Beldie’s alleged history of violence toward his wife and concluded he was a “medium-low risk.” The judge released him on electronic monitoring.
In a letter to the chief judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County, nearly 30 Chicago-area elected officials, including several city alderpersons, blasted the “multiple systemic failures” that led to Beldie’s killing and called for Nowinski to be removed from domestic violence court.
He was later transferred to municipal court, where he will oversee traffic and misdemeanor cases. But the chief judge has defended Nowinski, emphasizing prosecutors’ role in the hearing’s outcome.
Learning from Failure
With the goal of learning from past failures, the fatality review legislation calls for a two-tiered approach, with county-based review teams and oversight from a statewide committee.
The county teams are supposed to review the circumstances surrounding certain killings to assess how systems designed to intervene and prevent domestic violence performed. Just a few counties have joined review teams since 2021: Kankakee, Lake and Will, with joint teams operating in Madison and Bond counties as well as Winnebago and Boone counties. Those teams represent five of the state’s 25 judicial circuits.
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The statewide committee consists of representatives of law enforcement, academics and social service providers. Drawing on the local teams’ reviews, it is supposed to submit a report every two years outlining specific recommendations for “legislative, systemic, policy, and any other changes to reduce domestic violence and domestic violence related fatalities.”
In its first report, in 2024, the committee revealed it could not yet provide recommendations because none of the local teams had been formed.
Fatality review committees first appeared around 1995, as advocates and lawmakers around the United States began searching for new ways to stem the tide of domestic violence. In the years since, all but five states have established processes for reviewing fatal cases of domestic or intimate partner violence, according to the National Domestic Violence Fatality Review Initiative, an Arizona nonprofit that helps states develop review boards.
Those who back these efforts say they’re a tool that can improve outcomes for the vulnerable people domestic violence prevention policies are intended to protect.
A 2013 University of Washington study of outcomes in states that had established fatality reviews found that recommendations made by the panels had successfully prioritized issues related to their work. But prioritization alone “may not translate into organizational and institutional changes,” the study found.
Other states have experienced similar difficulties to Illinois’, not only in establishing a review process but maintaining it over time.
In South Carolina, implementation of the 2016 law establishing a review process of those killings has been “uneven,” said Sara Barber, executive director of the South Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.
The state’s apparatus is overseen by a central committee, with local teams operated by county-based district attorneys. But similar to Illinois’ law, the South Carolina law does not include new funding. With resources already stretched thin, that has led to spotty participation among local groups.
Many of the local teams meet only infrequently, Barber said. “I don’t want to say that there hasn’t been progress, but there’s more that could be done,” she said.
Even with all the attention the issue has received, not all states compile tallies of domestic violence-related killings. Tracking those numbers is notoriously difficult. Federal law requires law enforcement agencies to report general crime statistics. But determining whether there was domestic violence leading up to a killing requires collecting and analyzing records from disparate sources, something advocates say not all city or state governments require.
That said, estimates made by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from death certificates, police reports and other sources reveal a steady increase in domestic violence killings across the nation.
In 2017, 1,070 people were killed in the United States in circumstances involving domestic or intimate partner violence. By 2021, the most recent year for which statistics are available, that number had skyrocketed to 1,800.
Illinois’ own tally reflects the national pattern. The total rose from 34 killings to 49 over that same period, according to the CDC tallies.
Lawmakers and advocates in Illinois continue to look for ways to address the problems. Last month, after three failed attempts, the Illinois General Assembly passed Karina’s Law, which will require police to confiscate firearms from anyone whose Illinois gun permit has been revoked because a judge issued an emergency order of protection against them. Pritzker signed the bill into law earlier this month.
The bill is named after Karina Gonzalez, who in 2023 was shot to death along with her 15-year-old daughter in their Chicago home. Her estranged husband has been charged with the killings and has pleaded not guilty.
Jesus Alvarez, Gonzalez’s son, said he believes it’s important not only to pass laws aimed at domestic violence, but to make sure they work as intended. There are obviously flaws in the system, Alvarez said. “But if you get these laws right, it should hopefully be a little bit easier for people, and they won’t have to face the same kind of situation that I faced.”
Two Counties, Two Paths
With so many horrific examples of domestic violence taking place in Chicago and Cook County suburbs, the county’s omission from the review effort remains glaring.
Nonetheless, it was not an initial target as the statewide program launched, said Sara Block, a managing director at the nonprofit social service provider Ascend Justice and volunteer co-chair of the statewide effort.
“There’s just more dynamics to consider in Cook,” she said. “It’s not that it’s not a priority. We very much hope that every single circuit will have one in the end. But some just aren’t ready yet, and it will take more groundwork, it takes more education, more relationship building, before they are.”
The law enforcement and social service agencies asked to lead efforts in Cook County and elsewhere are already stretched for time and resources, said Jennifer Greene, advocacy director for nonprofit service provider Life Span and a member of the statewide overseeing committee.
“You have to have someone who can run that team — who can handle administration and making contact, and there’s just not any funding attached to it to do those things,” she said.
Officials and advocates in Winnebago County, in northwest Illinois, have found a way to overcome those and other obstacles.
When state lawmakers passed legislation calling for the review panels, the city of Rockford’s Office of Domestic and Community Violence Prevention saw an opportunity and took a leadership role.
Forming a local committee wasn’t a hard sell, said Jennifer Cacciapaglia, director of that Rockford office, which is in Winnebago County. A foundation grant to pay for staff and research time helped ease concerns about capacity.
“I think countywide there was a recognition that this could really create positive outcomes for people, so support has been wide,” she said.
Last month, she joined a small group of county advocates and officials to conduct the county’s first reviews of domestic violence killings, focusing on two cases. Cacciapaglia said the panel’s goal is to continue examining cases through the end of the year and submit findings to the statewide committee.
In early February, the statewide committee came together for its bimonthly virtual meeting. These gatherings begin with a moment of reflection, to pause and be reminded of what’s at stake by recalling a recent victim.
“We do this simply to keep survivors and those who have died due to domestic violence in the forefront of our minds,” said Andrea Wilson, recently installed director of the committee, to the assembled group.
The committee’s attention turned to Tanisha Weeks. A judge had granted the 41-year-old mother an order of protection against her ex-boyfriend last December. She was shot dead in January in an apparent murder-suicide in Chicago involving an ex-boyfriend.
Because the killing occurred in Cook County, there is no panel to review the circumstances.
