SE Illinois News

Hardin County State’s Attorney Todd Bittle noted the SAFE-T Act will not take effect in Hardin County. 

Of the counties, 65 have challenged the constitutionality of the Act. Hardin County was among the 37 counties that did not join the lawsuit. The judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.

“The no cash bail provisions of the SAFE-T act were found unconstitutional by a Kankakee County judge per written orders entered on December 29th and December 30th,” Bittle said in a statement. “A temporary restraining order was entered in Hardin County on today's date prohibiting the implementation of the no cash bail provision of the SAFE-T act. For all practical purposes it is business as usual in the criminal justice system in Hardin County.” 

The move comes days after Kankakee County Chief Judge Thomas W. Cunnington, of the 21st Judicial Circuit Court of Illinois, ruled the SAFE-T Act’s cashless bail provision unconstitutional. “The administration of the justice system is an inherent power of the courts upon which the legislature may not infringe and the setting of bail falls within that administrative power, the appropriateness of bail rests with the authority of the court and may not be determined by legislative fiat,” Cunnington wrote in his more than 30 pages decision.

Chicago-Kent criminal law professor Richard Kling said the ruling was a forgone conclusion. “The arguments raised all had merit, they weren’t frivolous,” Kling said, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

The SAFE-T Act will still take effect on Sunday in the counties that were not included in the lawsuit. In those counties, thousands of inmates currently being held in jails while they await trial on serious crimes would be released. But after the recent ruling, the 65 counties involved in the lawsuit will not be subject to those provisions of the SAFE-T Act. The Act changed after a campaign communications blitz revealed several glaring errors in the law. No Republicans voted for the bill or the subsequent changes. When the Safe-T Act is implemented in the surviving counties, those charged with the most heinous crimes—such as robbery, kidnapping, arson, second-degree murder, intimidation, aggravated battery, aggravated DUI, aggravated flight, drug-related homicide, and threatening a public official—will be freed, as Will County Gazette previously reported.