Fed judge rules Chicago alderman is unfit to face trial for bribery, corruption charges

An entrenched city councilwoman from the Windy City will likely skirt charges of corruption due to her age and poor health.

Former alderman Carrie Austin, 76, was indicted in July 2021 by a grand jury “for allegedly conspiring to receive home improvements from construction contractors seeking city assistance for a development project” in her Far South Side ward, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois said at the time, Fox News reported.

Austin’s court date was (conveniently) set years later for November 2025, but she allegedly suffers from several major heart and lung complications and cancer, according to her attorneys, who argued she isn’t physically able to withstand a trial.

In response, Federal Judge John Kness agreed and ruled that a trial would have an “unfit effect” on the defendant’s health.

“Merely the act of showering or walking from room to room in her house is strenuous for the Defendant, so there is no doubt that traveling to and from the courthouse, sitting in trial all day, and traveling to meet with her attorneys at night, even with the aid of a scooter, will have an ‘adverse effect’ on her health compared to resting at home as she currently does most of the time,” Judge John Kness said after consulting with doctors.

Austin was on the Chicago City Council for nearly 30 years and was charged by federal prosecutors with “one count of conspiring to use interstate facilities to promote bribery, two counts of using interstate facilities to promote bribery, and one count of willfully making materially false statements to the FBI,” Fox reported.

Austin and her chief of staff, Chester Wilson, were also accused of being provided with “personal benefits by the owner of the construction company and other contractors in an effort to influence them in their official capacities.”

“According to the indictment, starting in 2014, a construction company planned to construct a residential development in Austin’s ward at a cost of approximately $49.6 million,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

“According to the charges, in June 2017, a contractor on the development project paid an invoice for $5,250 to cover a portion of the purchase price of kitchen cabinets at Austin’s residence by falsely representing that the cabinets were for an address within the development,” prosecutors said. “In addition, in July 2017, Austin accepted from a contractor on the project an offer to pay for two ‘brand new’ and ‘expensive’ sump pumps, and to have the contractor’s family member buy and install a new dehumidifier, the indictment states.”

Austin reportedly collapsed during a City Council meeting in 2021 due to a lung condition, but prosecutors cited surveillance footage of Austin walking unassisted to and from a salon as evidence she was fit for trial.

That did not sway Judge Kness.