Longtime U.S. District Court Judge James Zagel, the former leader of the Illinois State Police who went on to preside over the corruption trial of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the landmark Family Secrets mob trial, and many other of the area’s biggest cases, died Saturday night after a long illness, according to court officials. He was 82.
Known for his wry sense of humor, unflappable demeanor, and side projects that included acting and penning a well-regarded legal thriller novel, Zagel ran a no-nonsense courtroom and became one of the premier faces of Chicago’s federal court.
“Judge James Zagel was not only a much-admired federal judge; he played one in the movies,” U.S. District Chief Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer wrote in a statement. “Anyone who knew him could see why: he looked the part, and he truly inhabited the role, reflecting the best of the third branch in his wisdom, common sense, and dry wit.”
Pallmeyer described Zagel as a “Renaissance man,” a lover of the arts, music, and literature and “a man of elegance and charm.”
“And he was a treasured friend to the attorneys and law enforcement officers he worked with for many years, his law clerks, and especially his fellow judges, who miss him dearly,” Pallmeyer said.
Current Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly said in a written statement Sunday that Zagel’s leadership at the agency “left behind an enduring culture of ethical, professional, intelligent enforcement of the law.”
“Every ISP director and everyone who serves in our agency aspires to meet his standards, whether they realize it or not, and that is a hell of a legacy,” Kelly said.
He is survived by his wife of 44 years, Margaret Maxwell Zagel, and many beloved cousins and dear friends, according to a release from the U.S. District Court.
Funeral arrangements were pending Sunday morning.
Born in Chicago in 1941, James Block Zagel as a child walked to Chicago Bears games at Wrigley Field from his family’s apartment in Lakeview, according to the release. He played tennis for the University of Chicago, studied philosophy and received a master’s degree in 1962.
After graduating from Harvard Law School, Zagel in 1965 joined the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, where he helped gain the conviction of Richard Speck, the notorious killer of eight student nurses on the city’s Southeast Side.
From 1970 to 1977, Zagel ran the criminal division of the Illinois attorney general’s office. One of his assistants was Jayne Carr, who would later marry Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson. As a colleague, Jayne Thompson said, Zagel was hard-driving, meticulous with the law and possessed of an “encyclopedic memory.”
”He can sit down and write a legal pleading and fill in the citations, including the page numbers, without bringing out a book,” she recalled for a 2010 Tribune profile.
Zagel eventually went to work in Thompson’s administration, first as director of the Department of Revenue and then as head of what was then known as the Department of Law Enforcement.
Zagel was appointed to the federal bench in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan, and while his law enforcement background has given him a reputation for leaning toward the government’s view, he became widely viewed by members of the defense bar as predictable and fair.
As a jurist, he also moonlighted on the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that decides whether to issue warrants for electronic eavesdropping on terrorism suspects.
Zagel had parts in two Hollywood movies and broad interests ranging from jazz to target shooting with court security officers.
Using the stage name J.S. Block, Zagel also appeared in the 1989 film “Music Box,” about a suspected war criminal on trial in Chicago. Zagel, whose middle name in real life is Block, played a judge in the film. Its courtroom scenes were shot at the same Criminal Courts Building that he once prowled as an assistant state’s attorney.
His last role as an actor was as the grieving son of a murder victim in Chicago writer David Mamet’s 1991 film, “Homicide.”
In his well-received 2002 novel “Money to Burn,” Zagel conjured up a story about a federal judge who masterminds an audacious heist at the super-secure Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago. The judge gets away with millions of dollars.
Among Zagel’s high-profile cases in real life was the 2007 Family Secrets trial, which ended with the convictions of five top associates of the Chicago Outfit who had been charged in a broad conspiracy blamed for 18 murders.
Zagel was tasked with managing a case with colorful lawyers in a circuslike atmosphere, and met with lawyers daily in order to keep control both inside and outside the courtroom. And while Zagel always remained personable, he didn’t put up with much.
In one telling example, Zagel told an attorney, Joseph Lopez, that he couldn’t write an Internet blog while the case was on trial.
The carnival atmosphere was repeated a few years later in the Blagojevich case, which featured a star defendant and legal team with flairs for the dramatic.
In sentencing Blagojevich to 14 years in prison in 2011, Zagel delivered a series of memorable lines that are now among the annals of Chicago political corruption cases.
“In the United States we don’t much govern at gunpoint. We require willing and creative cooperation and participation to prosper as a civil society,” Zagel said. “This happens most easily when people trust the person at the top to do the right thing most of the time and, more important than that, to try to do it all of the time. ... When it is the governor who goes bad, the fabric of Illinois is torn and disfigured and not easily or quickly repaired. You did that damage.”
One of Zagel’s last high-profile moments on the bench came in August 2016, when, after a federal appeals court threw out some of the counts of conviction against Blagojevich on technical grounds, he resentenced the former governor to the same 14-year prison term.
Zagel said then that he realized the suffering of Blagojevich’s family and applauded him for being a model prisoner, but he noted that the former governor’s conduct in prison was not as big a factor as the wrongdoing he committed while in office.
The judge also rejected the argument that the case against Blagojevich was any weaker because of the five counts thrown out on appeal. Zagel said the governor engaged in a clear pattern of corruption that benefited him personally and politically.
“He sees himself as less morally culpable, but I don’t draw such a clear moral distinction,” Zagel said. “As in many cases, political and personal gains were very much intermingled here.”
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