The Illinois Attorney General’s Office has defended an additional 25-year firearm sentencing enhancement for a Crest Hill man convicted of a deadly bar shooting in 2018.

Attorneys for Patrick Gleason, 63, have challenged the constitutionality of the sentencing enhancement for Gleason, who is already facing between 20 to 60 years in prison for the murder of Daniel Rios III, 52.

Rios was a bartender at Izzy’s bar in Joliet. After Gleason was kicked out of the bar, he returned wearing a mask and shot Rios in the neck, according to trial testimony.

Gleason then chased after and shot at bar patron Artis Henderson, according to trial testimony. Henderson and other patrons fought with Gleason to get the gun out of his hands, according to surveillance video.

During the struggle for the gun, Thomas Izquierdo, the son of Alfonso Izquierdo, owner of Izzy’s bar, suffered a non-fatal gunshot wound.

Gleason’s case spent more than seven years in pretrial limbo before it went to trial last fall.

A jury in October found Gleason guilty of the first-degree murder of Rios, the attempted murder of Henderson and the aggravated battery of Izquierdo.

Gleason’s sentencing was set for Nov. 18.

But the sentencing was delayed when Gleason’s attorneys filed a motion not only for a new trial but a motion asking the judge to reject what they deemed an unconstitutional 25-year firearm sentencing enhancement.

Because of the constitutional challenge, Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s Office was contacted and they filed a response on Dec. 19.

Will County Judge Vincent Cornelius may issue a ruling on the issue on Jan. 6.

A court filing from Assistant Attorney general Lauren Schneider said the Illinois Supreme Court has already rejected constitutional challenges to mandatory firearm enhancement as early as 2003.

Gleason’s actions were “intentional, calculated and dangerous to bystanders,” Schneider said. That is the “precise conduct” the state legislature “sought to deter” with the firearm sentencing enhancement law, she said.

“[Gleason’s] intentional and calculated use of a firearm killed one person, seriously injured another and endangered and traumatized innocent bar patrons,” Schneider said.

Schneider pointed out Gleason’s constitutional challenge is also premature.

Cornelius has not yet decided the “baseline sentence” for first-degree murder and hasn’t held a court hearing to establish evidence on issues such as Gleason’s alleged mental impairment, she said.

Gleason’s attorneys with The Tomczak Law Group contend the firearm sentencing enhancement constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment” under the law because it fails to account for Gleason’s severe intoxication and impaired mental state at the time of the shooting.

Those factors rendered Gleason unable to “fully comprehend or recall” the incident and it is “analogous to mental incompetency cases,” Gleason’s attorneys said.

Gleason’s attorneys said the enhancement is “disproportionate” because the shooting was an “isolated incident” instead of a pattern of criminal behavior requiring additional mandatory time to Gleason’s sentence.

But Schneider said “self-induced intoxication” bears no resemblance to an intellectual disability and it has long been recognized in English and American common law that such intoxication “does not excuse or mitigate criminal behavior.”