ShawnTe Raines-Welch appointed to panel that rules on judicial misconduct after under 2 years as a judge

Less than two years after Cook County Circuit Judge ShawnTe Raines-Welch took office, the Illinois Supreme Court has appointed her to the Illinois Courts Commission, which hears judicial misconduct cases and can remove judges from office.

Raines-Welch, who’s married to Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, D-Hillside, is one of two circuit judges on the commission, whose authority to punish judges for wrongdoing includes being able to remove them from the bench.

Chief Illinois Supreme Court Justice Mary Jane Theis won’t say why Raines-Welch was picked for the unpaid post, whose term runs until the end of 2026.

Asked about the appointment, a Supreme Court spokesman says: “The Illinois Supreme Court has authority under the Illinois Constitution to appoint two circuit court judges to the Illinois Courts Commission for one three-year term. Traditionally, one of these positions has come from Cook County and one from downstate. Judge Lewis Nixon held the Cook County spot and was due to have his three-year term end on Dec. 31, 2023. Due to an ongoing Courts Commission matter, his term was extended past that date. On July 26, 2024, Judge ShawnTe Raines-Welch was appointed to Judge Nixon’s seat.”

Nixon, a former federal prosecutor, became a Cook County judge in 2001 and is now a supervisory judge.

Raines-Welch couldn’t be reached.

A spokeswoman for her husband says the House speaker “did not know of this until after her appointment by the Supreme Court.”

Besides the two circuit judges on the courts commission, it also includes a member of the Illinois Supreme Court — Justice P. Scott Neville Jr., who’s the panel’s chairman — two appellate judges and two members of the public appointed by the governor. There also are a number of alternates.

The commission hears a wide range of cases involving accusations of judicial misconduct. Earlier this year, it booted Robert Adrian, a judge in western Illinois who made national news for reversing the sexual assault conviction of an 18-year-old man he’d earlier found guilty of raping a 16-year-old girl.

The commission kicked Adrian off the bench, saying he’d “engaged in multiple instances of misconduct, he abused his position of power to indulge his own sense of justice while circumventing the law, he lied under oath on multiple occasions, and he has failed to acknowledge his misconduct.”

Raines-Welch, who is one of about 400 Cook County judges, is assigned to the Maywood regional courthouse, hearing misdemeanor and criminal traffic cases.

With campaign help from her husband and from a Berwyn lawyer who used to raise campaign money for former Speaker Michael J. Madigan, she won election in 2022 from a judicial district that stretches from the northwest suburbs to the southwest suburbs.

That was after she was rated “qualified” by the two most influential attorney organizations that rate Cook County judicial candidates — the Chicago Bar Association and the Chicago Council of Lawyers — but drew unfavorable ratings from two other legal groups. The Illinois State Bar Association had rated Raines-Welch “not recommended.” The Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois had rated her “not qualified,” citing a “lack of legal knowledge, lack of trial experience and lack of reliability.”