Monday marked a historic moment in criminal justice as Kane County’s courtrooms and those in the rest of Illinois moved to a cashless bail system for defendants charged with a crime.

Now, judges decide whether defendants should be jailed until trial or set free without a cash bail. The decision depends on the severity of the crime, the defendant’s criminal history, their likelihood to flee and if the person poses a threat to the community, officials said.

The move is part of a larger criminal justice reform bill signed into law in Illinois in 2021 that saw several legal challenges which delayed its implementation.

Advocates say the new cashless bail system rectifies longstanding inequities in the criminal justice system, including the practice of keeping defendants in jail before trial only because they can’t afford to make bail.

Opponents have said the new law will allow violent people to be returned to the streets.

Kane County Chief Judge Clint Hull said the county’s courts had a successful first day implementing the new rules on Monday, in part thanks to a low level of cases.

Kane County Associate Judge Salvatore LoPiccolo, tasked with presiding over pretrial hearings Monday through Friday, saw six cases Monday. Four people were released without bail and two had detention hearings in the afternoon. Of the two, only one person was detained.

“The number of people before the judge this morning was substantially lower than what he normally sees,” Hull said. “It could be that there weren’t a lot of arrests last night, or it could be that police when arresting used their discretion to cite release, meaning there were less people in front of us today. Only time will tell on that.”

The new process requires a lot more collaboration between judges, public defenders, court services, the sheriff’s office and prosecutors, Kane County State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser said.

With the new system, at 5:30 a.m., court services officials in Kane County arrive to find out who is on the list to appear in front of LoPiccolo, and begin collecting information, such as the defendant’s criminal history, to prepare a risk assessment, Hull said. Public defenders come in at 7 a.m. and meet in person with the defendant in jail instead of over Zoom, a new step that hasn’t been done since before the pandemic.

Operationally, police officers now have to bring defendants to the Kane County courtrooms instead of having them appear via Zoom from satellite jails. Hull said he was pleased to see everyone arrived on time Monday.

Court begins at 10 a.m. and the state by that time will have had a chance to review all the cases coming in, officials said. Prosecutors can then file a detention petition before a judge if they believe a defendant should remain in custody.

At 1:30 p.m., the judge holds detention hearings where prosecutors must present clear evidence that detention is necessary because the defendant poses a threat to the safety of either a specific person or the community, according to officials.

On Monday, only one person was detained in Kane County. LoPiccolo said he has a list of statutes to look at when deciding whether to detain someone. The one person who was detained was selected in part because of his previous criminal history and because of the details of the crime itself, officials said.

The new practice requires more people in the courtroom than ever before, Mosser said. She had two to three assistant state’s attorneys there, including First Assistant Christine Bayer, who has taken a lead on implementation of the new rules, Mosser said.

The Kane County Circuit Clerk’s Office had two clerks in the courtroom and Kane County Sheriff Ron Hain had to staff extra people in the holding area to get defendants to where they needed to be, Mosser said.

“We definitely needed more people to accommodate this law,” Mosser said. “Right now, I don’t have a full division for the pre-trial release hearings and am having to utilize people from different divisions. Unless I am able to get three people into that unit, this isn’t sustainable to take people out of their court calls to be able to do this.”

While Mosser said she didn’t hear any reactions from defendants on the new cashless bail system, she has been fielding questions from law enforcement officers and from other state’s attorneys about the rules.

Kane County was one of three courts in Illinois chosen to pilot the new rules, which helped them get ahead of the curve, Hull said.

“All the pregame work and everything we did to prepare showed today, so there were no unanticipated issues or concerns that were raised,” Hull said. “Today was the first day we had real cases, but we’ve gone through it so many times and all the orders that were prepared worked out well.”

mejones@chicagotribune.com

Originally Published: Sep 18, 2023 at 5:35 pm