The Cook County state's attorney's office rolled out a new system for adult felony cases on Monday that aims to speed up the prosecution of criminal cases and offer a larger database that will store and track digital evidence.

The move comes as Cook County, which includes Chicago, has been taken to task over its slow and disjointed systems that can add months, and in some cases, years, to prosecute people. The new system will also make it easier for defense attorneys and prosecutors, as well as their supervisors, to monitor progress and take in discovery.

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Officials said the move was not in response to the Chicago Tribune's four-part series on how justice could be delayed for years while waiting on the courts, the prosecutors, and the defense attorneys to get on the same page, but it does come after its publication. In the newspaper's review of murder cases, it found Cook County's courts were taking longer than courthouses in New York and Los Angeles to weed out the guilty from the innocent, with delays now worse than pre-pandemic levels.

Homicide cases in comparable cities typically take less than a year to go to trial. In Cook County, the "goal" had been a little more than two years, but cases are now taking more than four years to complete, with some stretching as long as a decade.

"I think what you're discovering is a crisis," Northwestern University professor emeritus Tom Geraghty said. “I mean, four years to wait for a trial is ridiculous. Two years is ridiculous.”

The new system, developed by the firm NICE, could also help spot cases in which key evidence has not yet been submitted, as well as pinpoint prosecutors who are taking a lot longer to bring cases forward.

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The new system is also a leap toward technology in a county where prosecutors continue to use Windows 2000 on a computer because they receive large files that can only be opened on that operating system. Cook County's technology is decades behind what the private sector uses, and lawyers have long complained that they have wasted precious time attempting to get video files to work on the outdated system.

The new system will be able to read 90% of the video files the prosecutor's office receives, cutting down significantly on time.