(The Center Square) – A judge said Friday that he’ll allow a professor to testify about Chicago’s political machine at former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s upcoming corruption trial.
Madigan’s defense team had asked Judge John Robert Blakey to keep University of Illinois Chicago professor Dick Simpson from taking the stand in front of a jury. They said Simpson’s testimony would be “unreliable, irrelevant, and highly prejudicial.”
The judge disagreed and will allow Simpson to testify, but he set boundaries for that testimony at trial.
Prosecutors want to call Simpson to the stand to explain how Chicago politics and government work. That includes the workings of Ward organizations, Chicago’s political machine and patronage hiring.
The judge essentially agreed with the prosecutors.
“Professor Simpson’s proposed expert testimony primarily pertains to informing the jury about the existence and basic features of traditional ward political structures in Chicago,” he wrote in an order on Friday. “The Court finds that this testimony is helpful to the jury in this case.”