“This morning, the Illinois Supreme Court found the Pre-Trial Fairness provision of the amended Safe-T-Act constitutional. The law as originally written and passed by the General Assembly, included many glaring deficiencies, including the elimination of cash bail, which would have almost completely eliminated judicial discretion when considering a defendant’s likelihood to appear at future court hearings or if the defendant posed a danger to society. On October 3, 2022, myself, Kane County State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser and Champaign County State’s Attorney Julia Rietz, accepted an invitation from Illinois Senate President Don Harmon’s Deputy Chief of Staff to serve on a group of stakeholders that included only three state’s attorneys to remedy these deficiencies. Many of the improvements recommended by this group were passed by the General Assembly and signed into law on December 6, 2022. I am very proud of the improvements advanced by this group and, as the only Republican on the panel, I am grateful to Senate President Harmon for allowing me the opportunity to work in a bi-partisan fashion to ensure the continued protection of the public. These amendments go a long way in rectifying many, but not all, of the anticipated problems and restore some measure of judicial discretion at bond hearings.
Public safety remains my top priority and I will continue to advocate, as I have from the beginning, for a pretrial system similar to that in New Jersey which allows judges to detain a person for any crime where prosecutors prove by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant will not appear in court, the defendant poses a danger to any other person or the community, or the defendant will obstruct or attempt to obstruct justice, or threaten, injure, intimidate or attempt to threaten, injure or intimidate a prospective witness or juror. Such a system will improve public safety by ensuring that violent people are detained pretrial while those who are not a threat to the community are released.
I thank the trial team as well as all of my colleagues and the state’s attorneys who participated in the legal challenge to this new law for their outstanding efforts in representing the citizens of Illinois in this very important matter. Our engagement in this matter was conducted with no personal or political agenda regarding the Safe-T-Act and we remain committed to serving the residents of our counties under legislation passed by the General Assembly and signed into law by the Governor.”
