Cashless bail becomes the law of the Land of Lincoln on Sept. 18.
With months of political debate, campaign rhetoric and legal challenges seemingly in the rearview mirror after Tuesday's Illinois Supreme Court decision upholding the Pretrial Fairness Act, now comes the hard part: putting the law into action and making it work.
The law establishes Illinois as the first state in the U.S. to completely abolish a cash bail system for the pretrial release of suspects. Instead of requiring the accused to put up money to go free, judges will decide (but only if asked by prosecutors) to either jail defendants until trial or release them, often with conditions.
We spoke this week with two of the suburbs' top prosecutors -- DuPage County State's Attorney Robert Berlin and Lake County State's Attorney Eric Rinehart -- for a nuts-and-bolts look at how they plan to implement the change in Illinois' second- and third-largest counties, respectively.
Both say their offices have been gearing up for months and will be ready to go on Sept. 18. That preparation included beefing up their staffs of attorneys who work with police on new cases and decide what charges to file, a process often called felony review.
Now those attorneys also will work with police, and in some cases witnesses and victims, to decide whether to seek detention. Depending on the charges, they'll have 24 or 48 hours to make that call, and the accused will remain in custody while they decide.
by signing up you agree to our...
The Southport attacker, Axel Rudakubana, has suffered a violent assault and been attacked by another prisoner while in prison. False. The Ministry of Justice has confirmed that the claim is untrue ...