From the Tribune:

'90s bribery case judge comes out swinging
By Gerry Smith and Azam Ahmed | Tribune reporters
March 16, 2008
Thomas J. Maloney lives on a quiet street in the west suburbs. The 82-year-old reads books and writes letters, takes walks around the block and spends time with his wife and grandchildren.
But there was a time, about 15 years ago, when the former Cook County judge was described by a federal prosecutor as a man who "rewrote the meaning of corruption."
Today, after serving more than a dozen years in prison for taking bribes to fix murder cases, Maloney still claims his innocence and remains embittered toward those who put him there.
In a 20-minute interview Friday in the front doorway of his Woodridge home, Maloney described his 12 years and three months in federal prison, saying he taught boxing and was known as "Judge." Maloney, who is on home confinement, declined to be photographed.
Maloney maintains that he was a victim of "overreaching" prosecutors and "scumbag" witnesses who "were from the bottom of the barrel."
Maloney was convicted of taking thousands of dollars in bribes to fix three separate murder trials in the 1980s and was sentenced to almost 16 years in prison in 1994. The charges originally grew out of a federal sting code-named Operation Greylord that led to the conviction of 15 corrupt judges.
"I had weak representation," Maloney said of his attorneys in the case, "which surprised and disappointed me."
To this day, he denies ever witnessing a bribe take place at the Cook County Criminal Courthouse at 26th Street and California Avenue.
"You would always hear things, but I never factually knew of it," he said.
On Friday, Maloney blasted his chief accusers, onetime attorneys Robert Cooley and William A. Swano, as being "from the bottom of the barrel" and "two of the slimiest scumbags ever to function in the city of Chicago."
"I despised them, always had," Maloney said, "and never spoke to them, not then, not ever."
Reached by phone, Cooley said he was aware that Maloney had been released from prison but had not heard much else about him. Cooley said he was in Los Angeles working on a film based on his book, "When Corruption Was King."
"I haven't bothered following up on him," Cooley said. "He absolutely detests me in every sense."
Maloney said he served most of his time in a California prison, where as a sign of respect, prison guards and fellow inmates referred to him as "Judge."
When he was not reading in the prison library, the former high school and college boxer said he taught the sport to inmates using punching bags in an outdoor exercise area at the minimum-security correctional facility in Lompoc, Calif.
At the time of his conviction, Maloney was 67, and Assistant U.S. Atty. William Hogan called the verdict "virtually a sentence of natural life." But on Oct. 16, 2007, Maloney was released from prison and spent a short time at a halfway house before being placed on home confinement on Nov. 1 in Woodridge, according to Bureau of Prisons spokesman Michael Truman.
Maloney described his health as being "very good" and his weight as a "steady" 190 pounds. He occasionally smiled, revealing one gold tooth and a sizable gap between his front teeth.
He said that he was not currently working and had been living with his wife under 6-month home confinement since being released from a halfway house. He said his home confinement expires on April 15, but he'll remain on parole for another "three or four years."
Other than his walks around the block, Maloney is allowed to leave his house only on Sundays when he attends mass, he said.
Maloney said he is moving on with his life by focusing on his successes, boasting there have been few judges who presided over as many jury trials as he did. He said he has accepted his conviction and prison sentence as "part of an up-and-down life pattern."
"I had an eight-year boxing career. I had 25-year trial court career," said Maloney, referring to his time as an attorney as well.
Soon, Maloney said, he'll be reporting monthly to his parole officer. And someday, he believes his role as the only judge in Illinois history ever convicted of fixing murder trials in return for cash will be a distant memory.
"Things fade from your mind, or they don't," he said. "But in the natural course, most things do, whether they were dramatic or mundane. One way or another, they fade."