HERE IS THE LETTER TO THE EDITOR in this week’s chicago sun-times AND THERE IS STILL MORE TO COME.
Man’s detention over contempt order unjust
Reporter Frank Main’s recent Sun-Times investigation details Steve Fanady, a disabled options trader who has spent four years in solitary confinement at the Cook County Jail without a criminal conviction.
His incarceration did not result from murder, robbery, fraud or public corruption. It stems from a civil contempt order arising from a 17-year-old divorce after a four-year marriage with no children. In the 2011 divorce judgment, disputed accounts worth about $2 million were awarded to Fanady. He says he liquidated the stock years ago. His former wife came from a wealthy, well-connected North Shore family; Fanady was the son of Greek refugees whose single successful investment, made before the marriage, is the subject of this dispute.
Fanady has already spent longer jailed than former 14 Ward Ald. Ed Burke after his corruption conviction, and he could soon surpass Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s federal sentence.
Civil contempt is lawful only if it coerces compliance. It cannot be used as punishment.
Yet Cook County Circuit Judge Michael Forti has continued Fanady’s detention without an evidentiary hearing to determine whether it remains coercive or has become punitive. The court has never identified stock Fanady currently possesses. Instead, it continues to hold him in contempt based on the stock’s 2021 value — about $10 million, 10 years after the divorce — without identifying property he could produce.
Fanady also argues his detention orders expired years ago and that Forti has not conducted a compliance-status hearing in more than two years, despite local rules requiring periodic review to satisfy due process.
If the stock no longer exists, what can he produce?
While jailed, Fanady’s parents died. He missed their funerals. He has not seen his 13-year-old daughter from another marriage, and he says he has not seen sunlight in four years.
If that is not punishment, what is?
Illinois’ SAFE-T Act allows manycriminal defendants to remain free before trial, yet Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart retained private counsel to oppose Fanady’s release from jail on electronic monitoring. Fanady remains jailed without a criminal conviction while bearing the burden of proving he no longer possesses the property the court ordered him to produce.
Fanady blog 