Besides slamming Zekman for suggesting that the 17 months of sick leave Hubbard was paid represented "wasted tax dollars," the bar association also hammered the judge who handled the case.
The group said Judge James Obbish "blamed the victim of a crime for the crime itself" and "must have believed it was his role to teach morals as if to squabbling children rather than apply the law to the facts."
Given that Hubbard is a former president of the Cook County Bar Association, the rush to her defense was understandable. The association noted that Hubbard was "our friend" and said that it had refrained from commenting on the "travesty of justice" at the time of Nicosia's acquittal because it was "too close to the proceedings to permit our objective beliefs to be seen as anything other than personal displeasure." Unmentioned in the statement, however, was another reason that the bar association might have taken "personal displeasure" from the case: Its president, Natalie Howse, was one of the two assistant state's attorneys who brought the failed prosecution of Nicosia.
Whether Howse's "objective beliefs" informed the rant against Zekman is unclear: Howse and Zekman both declined to comment, while a spokeswoman for the state's attorney's office said any role Howse had in the impolitic rant against a judge she and her colleagues must practice before was "for the bar association to answer."
