Chief judge in St. Clair County gives verdict on first wave of hearings after cash bail system ends

A Belleville woman who has a 2-month-old baby girl was the first person released from the St. Clair County Jail under a new criminal justice system that bans cash bail in Illinois.

The woman, 25, is facing battery charges but got to leave the county jail Tuesday after a judge ruled in her favor.

A 38-year-old O’Fallon man being held on a weapons possession charge also was allowed to leave the jail Tuesday.

However, five others, including two charged with murder, were ordered to remain in the county jail following seven detention hearings conducted Monday and Tuesday in St. Clair County courtrooms.

They were seeking their freedom under Illinois’ new system in which detention hearings are conducted by judges to determine whether someone should stay in jail before their trial if prosecutors had filed a motion to keep them in custody. Illinois is considered the first state to entirely eliminate cash bail for defendants.

This process replaces the cash bail orders that ended Sunday. Under cash bail rulings, defendants could get out of jail if they posted 10% of their bond amount.

The state Supreme Court ruled in June that legislation abolishing cash bail was constitutional. It’s known as the Pretrial Fairness Act component of the Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today Act, or SAFE-T Act, which was approved along party lines as it was promoted by Gov. J.B. Pritzker and other Illinois Democratic officials and opposed by Republicans.

St. Clair County Chief Judge Andrew Gleeson sat in the courtroom pews to watch how some of the detention hearings progressed Tuesday under the direction of Associate Judge Sara L. Rice.

Gleeson said it is a “very small sample” size but the new process “seems to be working.”

The veteran judge said the people who are in the county jail are the ones who “need to be there” before their trial.

“We’re not swinging the jail doors open,” Gleeson said in an interview after the detention hearings were completed Tuesday afternoon. “We are making assessments and determinations as to who can be safely released into our community.

“I’m afraid that there’s been dis- and misinformation that people have the idea that we’re just letting everybody out. We’re not.”

Detention hearing process

Under the new detention hearing process to keep someone in jail before trial, prosecutors must prove by “clear and convincing evidence” that the defendant “poses a real and present threat to the safety of a person or the community.” If the prosecutors allege the person is a flight risk, they have to prove “no condition or combination of conditions can mitigate the defendant’s high likelihood of willful flight,” from prosecution, according to a statement by the Illinois Supreme Court Pretrial Implementation Task Force.

Defendants have a right to attorney and can present witnesses.

If a judge decides to detain a defendant, he or she must issue a written order “summarizing why less restrictive conditions would not avoid a real and present threat to the safety of any person or persons or the community, based on the specific articulable facts of the case, or prevent the defendant’s willful flight from prosecution,” according to the task force.

Supporters say the process is fair because low-income persons won’t be held in jail solely because they can’t afford to pay a bail amount.

Opponents such as the Fraternal Order of Police argue that 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.”

Requests to leave jail

There were four detention hearings on Tuesday and three hearings on Monday in St. Clair County.

In the cases Tuesday, two people were released and two were detained. On Monday, three persons were ordered to be held, according to Capitol News Illinois.

One detention hearing was conducted in Madison County Tuesday and the defendant was ordered to remain in jail on his stalking charges, according to a statement from the Madison County State’s Attorney’s Office.

For the woman who was released in St. Clair County while her battery charges are pending, the new system allowed her to avoid paying a bail, which jail records listed as $25,000. This meant she would have had to pay $2,500 to get out of jail on the charges of aggravated battery/use of a deadly weapon and domestic battery/bodily harm.

In her detention hearing, the woman was represented by St. Clair County Public Defender Cathy MacElroy, who told Rice that there is a possibility of a self-defense case to be made and that the victim declined medical treatment in the aftermath of a dispute during the woman’s Sept. 14 birthday party in Belleville. MacElroy told Rice that the woman and the victim had both been drinking at the party.

St. Clair County Assistant State’s Attorney Jeff Reel told the judge that the victim was struck by a piece of wood and that the woman charged is a “danger” to the victim, who attended the detention hearing.

Rice ordered the woman, who had been breastfeeding her child before she was arrested, to stay away from the victim for 72 hours.

“I’m glad they changed the rules so she can come home,” said LaToya Sampson, as she held her granddaughter in the hallway outside the courtroom where the woman’s hearing was conducted.

Rice also heard another domestic violence case on Tuesday morning.

A 38-year-old man faces charges of aggravated domestic battery and two counts of domestic battery - subsequent offense filed on Sept. 15 out of Caseyville.

Reel told the court that a female victim had told police she had two fractured ribs and that the man had previously been charged in domestic battery cases in St. Clair and Madison counties.

The defendant’s sister then testified that the victim told her that she may have broken her ribs when she fell multiple times while running from a dispute involving a person repossessing a vehicle before the Caseyville incident.

Rice ruled in favor of the prosecution in this case and ordered the defendant to be detained in the county jail.

Rice also heard about the O’Fallon man’s charge. He has a job, and East St. Louis police had released him after a police officer saw a gun slip out of his pants in a convenience store, according to MacElroy.

The judge decided that the O’Fallon man could leave the county jail. She ordered him to be home by midnight on the nights that he works and by 10 p.m. on his off days. She also reminded him he was not allowed to own firearms.

In reviewing his case for an unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon, Rice said, “This is a close one.”