Cook County tax official Samantha Steele cleared of drunken driving charge

A Cook County tax official was acquitted of drunken driving Tuesday after a two-day trial that focused on a November 2024 crash in Uptown and the police response.

Board of Review Commissioner Samantha Steele was arrested after her car hit a parked vehicle in the 5000 block of North Ashland Avenue, according to Chicago police records and body-camera footage.

Officers found an open bottle of wine in Steele’s car, but she never submitted to field sobriety or lab tests, according to records and testimony.

Cook County Judge Donald Suriano handed down the not guilty verdict after finding the evidence in the case only amounted to “suspicion of intoxication.” After the hearing, Steele’s attorney John Fotopoulos told reporters that “justice prevailed.”

In bodycam footage, Steele repeatedly tells officers she is an elected official and refuses to cooperate with them. She also made disrespectful comments to one officer about his genitals, records show.

Despite several requests, Steele wouldn’t initially provide officers her driver's license or get out of the car she was driving, bodycam footage shows. She agreed to get out of her car after speaking with a man she described as her attorney — Democratic Cook County Commissioner Scott Britton of Glenview.

Steele briefly agreed to submit to a field sobriety test, but backed out and began reporting head pain, prosecutors said. Officers reported discovering a half-empty bottle of red wine near her front passenger seat. Bodycam video shows the cork protruding from the top of the bottle..

Steele continued to be uncooperative when she was taken to a hospital, refusing to submit to blood or urine testing, according to testimony from an emergency room nurse and physician. It took the physician three tries to get Steele to agree to a CT scan, which found no indication of brain injury.

Prosecutors argued that Steele’s slurred speech, disrespect toward officers and smell of alcohol all indicated impairment.

Steele’s attorney argued that none of the seven witnesses prosecutors called could keep their story straight about the scent of alcohol. And though it was not “pretty,” Fotopoulos said Steele was invoking her “constitutional rights” during the arrest.

“She invoked the Constitution,” Fotopoulos told the judge. “She’s got a right not to be cooperative.”

Steele lives in Evanston and represents the Board of Review’s district covering much of the North Side of Chicago and northern suburbs.

Her first and only term was marred by controversies. On top of the DUI arrest, Steele was involved in disputes with two other Board of Review commissioners, the county’s inspector general and some of her own former aides. Steele lost reelection in November to longtime Democratic operative Liz Nicholson.