Last week St. Joseph County Republican leaders held a press conference on the lawn of the Juvenile Justice Center. They said Democratic incumbent Probate Judge Jason Cichowicz “stole money” while on the bench. The judge has fired back with a defamation lawsuit.
Cichowicz was no stranger to the county’s Juvenile Justice Center and its programs when he was elected probate judge in 2019. He’d worked for years as a public defender in juvenile cases, where he’d seen and experienced the growing backlog of cases.
By the time he took the bench, the system’s constrained resources had become nearly infamous. One of his predecessors, Judge Pete Nemeth, in the mid 2000s had heated battles with county leaders over funding. Nemeth even took the extreme step of issuing a legal mandate forcing the county council and commissioners to fund his budgets.
For one thing, Cichowicz said the building needed a fifth courtroom, and it had needed one for a long time.
Also by the time he took office in 2019, Cichowicz had developed a close relationship with a man named Levering Russell Cartwright. They’d met when Cichowicz was practicing law and handled Cartwright’s divorce case. Over time, Cichowicz says Cartwright, a wealthy retired corporate attorney, was estranged from his own children and had come to regard him as a son. He’d given him power of attorney and authorization for his checking account to help him pay his bills.
Cichowicz says Cartwright also made him trustee of his charitable foundation. He says Cartwright was generous with causes he cared about, sometimes giving his money anonymously because he didn’t want charities soliciting him. Cartwright often gave to groups that help at-risk kids, like the Youth Service Bureau. For example, he once gave them money for new windows in their old building, and he contributed toward their recently completed headquarters.
"Warren Township Little League, they had a Gator that was stolen," Cichowicz said. "We replaced the Gator for them. Dugouts that were burned over at Penn Township Little League.
"Russ really liked baseball. He was a White Sox fan, so when he would read the papers, stuff like that would happen. He would give me a call as I talked to him numerous times over the week, and he would say, 'Hey what do you think about helping them out? Not looking for any recognition. I'm not looking to take a bow. I don't want people coming and asking for money for the next best thing out there all the time.'
"So we would just do this quietly and help people out in the community."
Cichowicz says Cartwright wanted his foundation to pay for a fifth courtroom for the JJC. So the foundation gave $160,000 to the nonprofit Friends of the St. Joseph County Juvenile Justice Center, which paid a contractor $80,000 to build the courtroom.
The Friends group also spent $60,000 of the Cartwright money on vehicles to be used by volunteers with the Court Appointed Special Advocates, or CASA, program. CASA volunteers advocate for children who have been neglected as their cases move through the child welfare system. Sometimes that means having to drive to Indianapolis or Chicago to see the kids, and Cichowicz says CASA’s don’t always have reliable transportation for that, or they don’t want to put the miles on their own car when they’re already giving their time.
The Friends of the JJC spent the last $25,000 of the Cartwright money to renovate employee breakrooms.
The Supreme Court took issue with the fact that both the cars and breakroom renovations were purchased from businesses owned by Cichowicz’ father. The court noted that neither purchase was put out for competitive bids, as most publicly funded projects are required by law.
But Cichowicz says he didn’t think competitive bidding was necessary because the projects weren’t done with public money.
"Not using government money," he said. "Who would stand up and say no, we don't want that? Yes, we got it done way cheap. Yes, I gave the money to another 501(c)3 charity, the Friends of the JJC. That charity contracted with the commissioners to allow the work to be done. My name's not on any of that stuff. We just donated the funds for it."
But in August 2023 the Indiana Supreme Court found Cichowicz had committed judicial misconduct by continuing to serve in a fiduciary position for a non-family member after taking office, abusing the prestige of his office to benefit a family member, and failing to disclose his role as trustee of a charitable foundation from which he drew funds to further court improvement projects.
Cichowicz says that while he agreed to serve the 45-day paid suspension, he has no regrets.
"I improved these court facilities and I improved the operations of this facility," he said. "I don't have any regrets. I would do it again. It was the right thing to do. I received no money from it. The work that was done here was done for an under-reasonable cost. We had a cost of projection of around 200 and some thousand just to build the courtroom. It was done for 80 grand."
On Thursday Cichowicz filed a defamation suit against one of the people who held the JJC lawn press conference, Henry Davis Jr. Davis is a former South Bend common council member and the one who said the judge “stole money.”
Davis declined WVPE’s interview request. He’s told The South Bend Tribune that he’s not worried about the lawsuit because case law allows people to express opinions about public figures.
On Sunday a local blogger started a GoFundMe for Davis’ legal defense.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The initial version of this story incorrectly reported that Cichowicz met Cartwright when he was working at the law firm of Anderson Agostino & Keller. Cichowicz never worked at the firm. WVPE regrets the error.
