In May, Cannon abruptly stepped down from handling a murder case after long refusing to do so amid allegations by lawyers with the Bluhm Legal Clinic at Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law that she was openly biased against the defense. That came less than a week after the judge made bizarre comments while castigating defense lawyers for what she called "a personality defect regarding me" and denying she had called one of the lawyers "Mr. Underpants" behind his back.