“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.
The SAFE-T Act would end cash bail and includes 12 non-detainable offenses:
Second-degree murder, aggravated battery, arson without bail, drug-induced homicide, kidnapping, burglary, robbery, intimidation, aggravated DUI, aggravated fleeing and eluding, drug offenses, and threatening a public official.
Will County State Attorney, James Glasgow, said it will be the “end of days” once the law takes effect.
From the Prairie State Wire:
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, kidnapping, 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.”
Several are advocating the General Assembly take another swipe at the legislation.
“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,” Mike Koolidge, a spokesman for the Political Action Committee People Who Play By the Rules, said, 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.”
Glasgow has declared that the violence is likely to get worse with the forthcoming implementation of statewide cashless bail under the SAFE-T Act, Will County Gazette reported.
Even those charged with the most serious crimes can be released on bail, according to the bill, without having to deposit a monetary bond.
