Alphanso Talley/Image: via Chicago Police Department
In 2023, HB 3653, the SAFE-T (Safety, Accountability, Fairness, and Equity- Today) ACT, went into effect in Illinois. Pushed by Democrats and signed into law by Governor JB Pritzker, the ACT abolished cash bail.
As a result, individuals can be released on no bail while awaiting court date who are accused of certain felonies such as “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 offenses, and threatening a public official.”
Pritzker said at the time, “Transforming the pretrial detention system so low-income people aren’t thrown behind bars while only the wealthy walk free, diverting low-level drug crimes into substance-treatment programs and reducing excessive stays in prison.”
And transform it has.
Alphonso Talley, a seven-time convicted violent felon, was released on electronic monitoring, with no cash bail, last December by Cook County judge John Lyke, despite having four pending felony cases.
Last weekend, after prosecutors said he escaped the monitoring, he allegedly beat a store employee during a robbery and then shot two Chicago police officers who took him to the hospital after he claimed he swallowed drugs.
One officer was left dead, and another is fighting for his life in critical condition.
Block Club Chicago reports:
A man accused of killing Chicago Police officer John Bartholomew and critically wounding his partner while at Swedish Hospital used the same gun in the shootings as he did in a robbery and beating of a store employee on the North Side earlier in the day, prosecutors said Thursday.
Alphanso Talley, 26, was taken to the hospital after being arrested for the first attack at a Family Dollar store after he claimed he had swallowed drugs. But how he was able to allegedly hide the gun even after being taken into police custody and going through hospital security was not addressed in the latest hearing in the case Thursday.
Prosecutors said he used the gun to shoot Bartholomew, 38, a 10-year police veteran, and his partner, a 21-year veteran who remains in critical condition, while getting ready for a CT scan at the hospital. Talley faces a litany of charges in the case, including first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, aggravated battery of a police officer and kidnapping.
Judge John Lyke notes that Talley would have faced “a minimum $1 million bail” under the state’s old cash bail system, but that era is over.
CWB Chicago reports:
“Our esteem[ed] Legislature says, no, we’re not going to do that anymore,” Lyke said in reference to Pretrial Fairness Act provisions of the SAFE-T Act. “We’re going to make judges take a critical look at it.”
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Lyke weighed it all — Talley’s five felony convictions, his four pending cases, and the ankle monitor he was wearing when he allegedly committed two of those pending cases while armed with a gun — and decided that he could not keep Talley in jail under the SAFE-T Act.
“This court cannot find that the state has met its burden by clear and convincing evidence that there is no condition or combination of conditions that this court can impose to protect any person or persons in the community when weighing everything with a fresh set of eyes and understanding,” Lyke said.
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