YORKVILLE – Kendall County State’s Attorney Eric Weis says that the amendments to the state’s controversial SAFE-T Act signed by Gov. JB Pritzker do not go far enough.
The Safety, Accountability, Fairness, Equality-Today Act and its cashless bail component is set to take effect with the new year.
Weis contends that the law will result in more repeat offenders, take away the discretion of judges to hold someone charged with a crime and make it more difficult to ensure that a defendant shows up in court.
Under the law, police will not be allowed to detain persons arrested for certain offenses, such as aggravated battery or fleeing and eluding a police officer.
For other offenses, including first-degree murder, police and prosecutors must convince a judge that the offender constitutes a continuing threat to a specific, identifiable individual.
Democratic lawmakers amended the bill to expand the list of detainable offenses, as well as outlining what prosecutors must show a judge in order for a defendant to be held pending trial.
“The bill is better than it was, but it is not good enough,” Weis said.
Weis and 57 other county state’s attorneys from around Illinois filed lawsuits challenging the SAFE-T Act on constitutional grounds.
The sweeping SAFE-T Act covers more than 750 pages and includes a variety of policing and judicial reforms, but under the Illinois Constitution, only appropriations bills are exempt from a requirement that a piece of legislation must be confined to a single subject.
The complaint further alleges that the cashless bail system violates protections for crime victims included in the state constitution.
The lawsuits challenging the act were consolidated into a single case that is being argued in a Kankakee County courtroom, with a decision expected to be handed down on Dec. 28, just four days before the SAFE-T Act becomes law on Jan. 1, 2023.
However, Weis is predicting that the ruling will be appealed whatever the decision at the trial court level.
That appeal will go either to an appellate court or directly to the Illinois Supreme Court, depending on the trial court’s decision, Weis said.
Whenever a law is found to be unconstitutional, it is automatically appealed to the state’s high court.
If this happens, the justices could place a stay on the law until they have delved into the constitutional questions, or they could allow the law to take effect while they continue their deliberations.
However, if the trial court upholds the law, the state’s attorneys would appeal to an appellate court, which would be unlikely to place a stay on the law while it conducts its hearings, Weis said.