New Public Defender Coming to Warren County

The Warren County Board voted on Wednesday afternoon to hire Justin M. Bougher of Lucie, Scalf, Sutton, & Bougher of Macomb to fill the vacancy of public defender for the county. A search has been ongoing since Attorney Tom Siegel announced in early May that he would resign on July 1. A barrage of felonies since Nov. 2017 had forced Siegel into working an extended number of hours.

Siegel started public defense work with the county in 2006, but hadn’t reached 100 hours of public defense work in a month until Nov. 2017. That trend has burgeoned into 2018, forcing Siegel to give up his public defense work.

Bougher was born on the west side of Chicago, Illinois. He attended college at the University of Iowa and obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in English in 2006. After graduation, he returned to Chicago and attended the DePaul University College of Law, obtaining his Juris Doctor in 2010. After graduating from DePaul, Justin moved to Macomb, Illinois and worked as an Assistant State’s Attorney in McDonough County until 2014 when he joined the firm.

written by Jackson Kane