“An Illinois law taking effect in the new year will release those charged with second-degree murder, aggravated battery and arson without bail,” The Counter Signal reports.
A state attorney says the insane law will spell end of days for Illinois.
The so-called SAFE-T Act would end cash bail and includes 12 non-detainable offences.
The offences include: second-degree murder, aggravated battery and arson without bail, as well as drug-induced homicide, kidnapping, burglary, robbery, intimidation, aggravated DUI, aggravated fleeing and eluding, drug offences and threatening a public official.
After the act takes effect on January 1st, the aforementioned crimes become non-detainable offences.
Criminals will be be charged with and released for these crimes without bail.
Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow said it will be the “end of days” once the law takes effect.
The bill “will destroy the city and the state of Illinois,” Glasgow said on July 16.
“I don’t even understand (how) the people who support it can’t realize that.”
Will County is the second largest county of the 6-county Chicago metro region and Illinois’s fourth-most populous county.
This is insane, Illinois!
An Illinois law taking effect in the new year will release those charged with second-degree murder, aggravated battery and arson without bail. https://t.co/qWbeNqsVsq
— AuntieEm, Standing with Israel ❌ (@Auntiem475) September 7, 2022
ILLINOIS: The so-called SAFE-T Act would end cash bail & includes 12 non-detainable offences – 2nd-degree murder, aggrav. battery & arson without bail, as well as drug-induced homicide, kidnapping, burglary, robbery, intimidation, aggravated DUI, & more! https://t.co/B6j9HxGxcz
— Dixie T 🇺🇸 🍊🍊🍊 (@DixT3) September 7, 2022
Prairie State Wire reported:
Chicago Morning Answer host Dan Proft noted the crimes under which criminals will be allowed to be charged with and released after the SAFE-T Act goes into effect.
“In point of fact, under the SAFE-T Act, non-detainable offenses would include – by non-detainable meaning you’re released – burglary, robbery, arson, kidnaping, second-degree murder, intimidation, aggravated battery, aggravated DUI, aggravated fleeing, eluding drug offenses, drug induced homicide and threatening a public official,” Proft said on his Aug. 5 broadcast of Chicago’s Morning Answer on AM 560.
Proft spoke with Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow regarding how a man plotting to assimilate Glasgow would have been treated if the SAFE-T Act would have been in effect.
“Jim, I know you’ve made this point, and so I’d like you to make it just to make this concrete. When Drew Peterson, you know, was plotting to assassinate you – and under this law, if he hadn’t been in prison, he wouldn’t be in prison,” Proft said.
Glasgow said the murder trial he undertook with Peterson was difficult and would have been made worse – and possibly deadly for him – if the accused had been free.
“If you go back to his murder trial, he was in jail for three years on a $20 million bond,” Glasgow said. “That’s the most difficult prosecution I’ve ever handled. And there’s no way in the world that I would have weathered that storm had he been out of jail. In fact, on the overhear when he was captured by the FBI, when they were discussing my murder, he said if he was out on the street, he’d take care of it himself. And then he referenced back to ’07 when it all started that he was going to take care of it then but he couldn’t slip the media and the police. So there’s real danger at all levels here when violent offenders cannot be held.”
James Murphy III, a former office manager for Cook County State Attorney Km Foxx, criticized the SAFE-T Act, which would take effect on Jan. 1, 2023 for removing cash bail from criminal cases.
“The prosecution has the burden of proof under the SAFE-T Act if they think a person accused of a crime should be kept in jail. Detention is only permitted under the law if it is proven that the defendant “poses a specific, real and present threat to a person or has a high likelihood of willful flight,” Prairie State Wire noted.
“I have been thinking about leaving for a while now. Really, the thoughts began back in January of 2021, when the ‘SAFE-T Act’ was passed,” Murphy said in the letter, according to CWB Chicago.
“Seeing this administration’s involvement in that process was an eye-opening experience for me. To be clear, I am in support of eliminating cash bail – no person should sit in jail solely because they can’t afford to pay for bail. But I never understood the rush on an issue that was so important. I voiced my concerns at the time. And it was in that process that I began to realize that the administration’s ‘Mission Vision and Values’ was just a PR stunt, just words on a page. Fairness. Accountability. Integrity. Respect. Collaboration. Those words should mean something. They do to me. And I know that they do to you as well. Yet time after time after time this administration has shown that they don’t live the meaning of those words. Or they don’t care.”
“This January, if nothing is done, mayhem will ensue across Illinois as alleged perpetrators held in pre-trial confinement for crimes from petty theft all the way up to murder will be let out of jail everywhere,” said Mike Koolidge, a spokesman for the Political Action Committee People Who Play By the Rules, Prairie State Wire reported.
“Any respectable legislator and state’s attorneys who doesn’t do something about this before then will have blood on their hands, the least of which being the man who signed this catastrophic bill into law, Democrat Gov. J.B. Pritzker.”
The Counter Signal added:
The law also restricts those who can be arrested. For example, those accused of trespassing can be ticket but not arrested once the law takes effect.
Glasgow said he, police, and judges will all have their “hands tied” once the law takes effect.
He said that all 640 people currently being held in the Will County jail would have their bonds extinguished after January 1 — including 60 people charged with murder. Glasgow said he won’t be able to hold anyone in jail for longer than 90 days if they demand a trial, and after the 90th day, they’ll get out “no matter what crime they committed.”
“What you see in Chicago, we’ll have here,” he warned.
He said the electorate must demand those running for election in November to repeal the bill.
Glasgow also said legislators didn’t understand the bill and only had two days to digest its 800-pages.
“You’ve got legislators who aren’t lawyers, you’ve got legislators who weren’t criminal lawyers,” he said. “Trying to read all that in two days. It was impossible.”
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