CHICAGO â More than 2,600 people have been in custody at the Cook County Jail or at home on electronic monitoring for more than a year as a massive backlog of felony cases has piled up at the Cook County Circuit Court. The backlog is a direct result of restrictions that Chief Judge Timothy Evans put in place last year to limit the spread of Covid-19. Evans postponed all jury trials and scaled back most court operations. Even when court cases picked up again on Zoom, technical difficulties and some defendants' lack of access to computers or internet delayed cases further, and some proceedings could only be done in person.