Last week the Illinois House and Senate approved amendments to the controversial criminal justice reform law the SAFE-T Act. The next step is an important court challenge on grounds the Act violates the Illinois Constitution. Hearings had been set for this Wednesday, December 7 in Kankakee County Court where the Democratic State’s Attorney James Rowe will be lead prosecutor against top state officials of his own party.
But that scheduled high-stakes courtroom challenge to the constitutionality of the act has been pushed back to December 20 from this Wednesday. Kankakee County is where 58 separate county state’s attorney lawsuits to halt the SAFE-T Act have been consolidated. Kankakee County court officials confirmed Monday to Wirepoints the delay is so that parties to the suit can see if Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signs the amendments.
At first blush it’s a head-scratcher because the claims in the civil suit highlight constitutional issues on which the recent legislative actions in theory have no bearing. But a layer deeper, the developments may suggest that the defendants – Governor Pritzker, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, House Speaker Chris Welch and Senate President Don Harmon – may be preparing to argue that the signed amendments would remedy the complaints of the plaintiffs.
Prominent among claims in the consolidated lawsuits is that the state constitution guarantees cash bail and that the 764-page SAFE-T Act allegedly violated that guarantee. The lawsuits also claim the Act violates the Constitution’s single subject rule.
Marla Coxley is a media liaison for Chief Judge of Kankakee and Iroquois Counties Circuit Court, John Cunnington, who is to hear and rule on the consolidated lawsuits by the county’s state’s attorneys against the SAFE-T Act. She told Wirepoints Monday the court has moved the hearing to the 20th to allow time to see if Pritzker will sign the amendments.
Another Kankakee County justice official, Assistant State’s Attorney John Coghlan, confirmed that to Wirepoints today, saying, “she was right. Just because of the uncertainty” around whether Pritzker would sign the amendments. He declined further comment, citing the pending litigation. Later Monday the case docket was updated to reflect Judge Cunnington presented and filed a signed order to continue the case to December 20 in his courtroom.
Developments suggest the defendants may argue the amendment to the SAFE-T Act once signed will represent a remedy to the complaint that the Act violates the spirit of the Illinois Constitution. Legislative sources note that some among the 58 county lawsuits raised other issues which may be addressed to some extent in the Act’s amendments. So prosecutors may welcome a chance to retool their case.
Certainly some big issues are at stake, foremost among them the abolition of cash bail. In Article 1 titled “Bill of Rights” the Illinois State Constitution holds in Section 9 that “all persons shall be bailable by sufficient sureties.” In Section 8.1 of Article 1, titled “Crime Victims’ Rights,” the constitution states victims must be “reasonably protected from the accused throughout the criminal justice process” and must have their safety “considered in denying or fixing the amount of bail, determining whether to release the defendant, and setting conditions of release after arrest and conviction.”
DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin was not one of the 58 who filed suit to rescind the SAFE-T Act but he was the sole Republican among four state’s attorneys who negotiated the amendments with legislative leaders. He praised the revisions but said of the postponement on the grounds given by Kankakee County, “the basis of the lawsuit really should not be impacted by this legislation, by this new amendment.”
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