Back in the days of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, some two-thirds of those in the Illinois General Assembly were lawyers.

Even in the 1970s, a good percentage of legislators had law practices on the side. Or, perhaps more accurately, vice versa.

But the number of attorney-lawmakers has been dropping since then. When the new General Assembly is seated on Jan. 9, there will be just 21 lawyers in the House and 15 in the Senate. That's a decline of one per chamber.

Of course, three of the four leaders - Michael Madigan, John Cullerton and Tom Cross - are lawyers. And the fourth, Christine Radogno, is married to a lawyer.

But as for the rank and file, not so much.

Many law practices are more time consuming these days, and legislators, theoretically part-time, are expected to put in more hours than in the past. So it's harder to combine both roles.

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As political candidates scurry around at the last minute looking for just a few more votes, they're thinking about stories such as that of Jim Jontz, a state representative, state senator and congressman who formerly represented northwest Indiana.

As Ray E. Boomhower tells it in his new biography of Jontz, on Election Day eve in 1974, two campaign workers were driving home after a long day on the campaign trail. They came upon Jontz, then campaigning for a seat in the Indiana House of Representatives in his first run for political office.

They offered him a ride, but he responded, "No, it's late, but there's a laundromat up there that's still open. I think I'll hit before I quit for the night."

Jontz was a 22-year-old Indiana University graduate with an unpaid job as a caretaker for a local nature preserve. His opponent was the Indiana House majority leader.

More prosecutors these days are starting to admit that innocent people sometimes go to prison.

Or at least that's the observation of Samuel R. Gross, who is the Thomas and Mabel Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School and a graduate of Columbia College in 1968.

As discussed in a blog post here on Wednesday, Gross is the editor of the National Registry of Exonerations, a joint project of the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law.

The registry, which went into business in May, maintains a detailed online database of all known exonerations in the United States since 1989. It recently posted its 1,000th case. The rate of adding new cases could be faster, but "finding and researching and writing up these cases is a fair amount of work" and the registry has only two staff people.

"The main purpose of putting it together and making this information available was to learn more about wrongful convictions," Gross said.

On Tuesday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel came down on Northwestern University's side in its battle to raze the old Prentice Women's Hospital, a building that preservationists want to save.

Is that the last chapter in the story?

Some architects hope not. Next month, architectural firms will put their ideas for saving Prentice while meeting Northwestern's needs on display in a "Future Prentice" exhibition organized by the Chicago Architecture Club in partnership with the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the Chicago Architecture Foundation.

Above is an image from one of the submissions. This one is from Kujawa Architecture LLC of Chicago.

For those keeping track, the 5-month old National Registry of Exonerations has posted its 1,000th case.

The registry, run by the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, is trying to provide detailed information about all exonerations since 1969. It's adding new ones at a rate of nearly five per week.

The 1,000th exoneree is Lawrence Williams of Brooklyn, N.Y., who was jailed for two years for assault in a case of mistaken identity. According to the registry, Williams was cleared after an investigation by the Kings County District Attorney's Office proved his innocence.

According to Samuel Gross, editor of the Registry and law professor at the University of Michigan, more prosecutors around the country are creating "conviction integrity units" to prevent and reverse false
convictions, including the district attorneys in Dallas, Manhattan and Santa Clara County, Calif.,
as well as Kings County, N.Y.

Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez started a conviction integrity unit in February.

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In Washington, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) is arguing that the "Arab Spring" has made non-Muslim religious minorities increasingly vulnerable.

But some religious leaders think there's more to the story, at least in Palestinian areas.

"The Christian community is vanishing, and it is not because of Islamic terrorism," the Rev. Dr. Donald E. Wagner, program director of the Friends of Sabeel North America told the Sun-Times Editorial Board last week. "It is because of losing land, of having economic deprivation and just little future for the kids."

Christians historically made up about 18 percent of the Palestinian population, but are now down to 1.1 percent, Wagner said.

With Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle's proposed new gun and ammunition taxes, she is drawing a link between guns and the county's high cost of treating gunshot victims

The National Gun Victims Action Council provided some support for that position this week.

By the council's estimate, taxpayers spent more than $5 billion each year to cover the cost of U.S. gun homicides. Here's the arithmetic: Each gun homicide costs $400,000, times an average of 12,000 gun homicides a year.

Preckwinkle puts the cost to treat each uninsured gunshot victim at Stroger Hospital at $52,000.

Read an Oct. 29 Sun-Times story here.

Read an Oct. 9 Sun-Times editorial here.

Read the National Gun Victims Action Council statement here.

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Usually, the political argument we hear is that we need less government.

But in Cook County, it's the opposite. County officials are saying they want less to govern.

Cook County is technically the municipal authority for the many remaining unincorporated pockets dotting the county. Cook County sheriff's police patrol those areas. Cook County also does the building inspections.

But serving small pockets of land that are separated by miles of village or city acreage is inefficient, and the county would like to get out of the business.

A class action petition on behalf of prisoners whose cases rested all or in part on statements obtained through torture was filed Tuesday.

Lawyers from the MacArthur Justice Center and the People's Law Office are asking that a process be set up to get to the bottom of the question of whether any state prison inmates are incarcerated because of confessions or statements obtained through torture under former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge.

Burge and his rogue cops tortured numerous African-American men into making confessions in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Save Prentice Coalition on Monday released a rendering of the existing old Prentice Women's Hospital with a 200,000 square-foot tower addition, on top of the 315,000 square-foot existing building.

The rendering was prepared for Landmarks Illinois by Antunovich & Associates, a Chicago architecture firm.

Read an Oct. 16 Sun-Times story here.

Read a July 26 Sun-Times editorial here.

Read an Oct. 17 New York Times story here.

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