The Illinois Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a state law passed following the death of George Floyd that intended to end cash bail for most criminal defendants.
The SAFE-T Act was approved by the state’s General Assembly in January 2021 but was halted at the eleventh hour after a Kankakee County judge ruled the ending of cash bail to be unconstitutional.
The lower court ruling was sent to the state’s Supreme Court, which overturned the ruling in a 5-2 decision.
“The Illinois Constitution of 1970 does not mandate that monetary bail is the only means to ensure criminal defendants appear for trials or the only means to protect the public,” Supreme Court Chief Justice Mary Jane Theis said in the court’s opinion.
“Our constitution creates a balance between the individual rights of defendants and the individual rights of crime victims. The Act’s pretrial release provisions set forth procedures commensurate with that balance.”
However, plaintiffs can still be detained pending trial if they are “charged with any of the array of enumerated felony offenses and ‘poses a real and present threat to the safety of any person or persons or the community.’”
The law will go into effect in the state on September 18.
Governor JB Pritzker, 58, approved of the decision, writing in a statement: “I’m pleased that the Illinois Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the SAFE-T Act and the elimination of cash bail.
“We can now move forward with historic reform to ensure pre-trial detainment is determined by the danger an individual poses to the community instead of by their ability to pay their way out of jail.”
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who defended ending cash bail in multiple challenges, agreed with the governor, saying: “Someone’s experience with the criminal justice system should not vary based on their income level.
“The SAFE-T Act was intended to address pervasive inequalities in the criminal justice system, in particular the fact that individuals who are awaiting criminal trials – who have not been convicted of a crime and are presumed innocent – may spend extended periods of time incarcerated because they cannot afford to pay cash bail,” Raoul said.
“The law ensures that the decision about whether people are detained pending trial is not based on whether they can afford to pay for their release.”
Proponents of eliminating cash bail describe it as a penalty for the poor, suggesting that the wealthy can pay their way out of jail to await trial while those in economic distress have to sit it out behind bars.
In Spring 2020, the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Pretrial Practices strongly endorsed bail reform, noting they found that a defendant who can’t afford bail sees his or her life unravel within days — loss of a job, loss of child custody, health problems without access to medication.
The commission also found that it tends to generate spurious plea deals. Defendants reason that pleading to a lower-level offense gets them out of jail sooner.
In addition, critics have argued that bail is a time-honored way to ensure defendants released from jail show up for court proceedings.
Justices David Overstreet and Lisa Holder White dissented from the court’s ruling, saying the act is a “direct violation of the plain language of our constitution’s bill of rights and, more specifically, the bested rights of crime victims.”
“The people of Illinois exercised their ultimate sovereign power in 2014 when they vested crime victims with constitutionally protected rights. They did so by amending the bill of rights in our state constitution, setting out specific enumerated rights to be enjoyed by all crime victims in this state,” Overstreet wrote.
“Those enumerated rights include the explicitly defined right to have their safety and the safety of their families considered by the courts in ‘denying or fixing the amount of bail.”
The Illinois Fraternal Order of Police also lambasted the Court’s ruling, saying the Justices “ignored the pleas of nearly every prosecutor in the state of Illinois.”
“The elimination of cash bail will put dangerous criminals back on the street, instead of keeping them in jail or forcing them to post cash bail as they await trial. Many of those offenders will commit crimes again within hours of their release,” Illinois FOP State Lodge President Chris Southwood.
Southwood also said the ruling made police officer’s jobs “immeasurably more difficult” and it was a “slap in the face to those who enforce our laws and the people those laws are supposed to protect.”
With Post wires.
