Lady Arrested In Law Library Turns Out To Be An Attorney, Says The Cops 'Humiliated' Her

JOLIET, IL — An attorney said she was “humiliated” by deputies who shackled her wrists and ankles, then led her off to jail after a disagreement with a courthouse employee who demanded she wear shoes.

“I thought about reporting it to the chief judge but I didn’t know what good it would do,” attorney Robin Bright, 57, said of her ordeal at the Will County courthouse April 14.

Bright said she was working in the courthouse law library when she slipped out of her shoes, just as she’s “done hundreds of times before because they were tight and uncomfortable.”

After returning from a trip to the restroom, Bright’s shoes were missing. She figured out a courthouse employee picked them up and put them in a conference room, she said, and that’s when the trouble started.

“I really need you to put your shoes on,” Bright recalled the employee telling her. When Bright demurred, the employee called the cops and “two or three of them (arrived) to address this very serious crime.”

After things settled down, Bright said she got back to work. She later needed assistance from staff and objected when the same employee who had a problem with her bare feet offered her services.

“I don’t want her helping me,” Bright remembered saying. “She’s a troublemaker.”

That brought the deputies back. One of them told Bright, “You’re done,” she said, and she was handcuffed, put in ankle shackles and taken to the county jail.

“Oh my God,” Bright said. “I felt humiliated, I felt embarrassed.”

Bright spent about six hours in lockup before she was released on her own recognizance. She said she’d ever been put in jail before.

Bright, who was a Cook County assistant state’s attorney for four years before going into private practice, said the Will and Kankakee County cops abuse their authority.

“I never had an incident like that in Cook County,” she said, adding, “These sheriff’s deputies think they can do whatever they want.”

Bright was given a May court date to face a trespassing charge.

“I think I’m going to defend myself,” she said.

“I’m taking it all the way to trial,” Bright said, “and I expect to win.”