Column: Quirk in SAFE-T Act muddles death of Antioch woman

Chicago Tribune

5 days ago

It was Winston Churchill who pointed out decades ago: 'A lie gets halfway around the world before truth gets its pants on.'
A Lake County judge last week unfortunately found the British statesman's thoughts to be true. This after she followed the guidelines of the Illinois SAFE-T Act, which was signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker on Jan. 22, 2021.
Associate Circuit Court Judge Randie Bruno was condemned in national media reports last week for releasing a Waukegan man charged with letting the corpse of an Antioch woman rot in his garbage bin for several weeks. 'Significant threats and harassment', authorities said, were forthcoming from morons who either don't know Illinois law, believed incorrect reporting or casually decided to ignore what are considered to be jailable offenses here.
Authorities are investigating the threats for the judge's lawful actions in the first-appearance hearing of Jose Luis Mendoza-Gonzalez, 52, who has been charged with concealing the death, among other charges, of Megan Bos, 37. Yet, the damage was done after a U.S. Department of Homeland Security official said, 'It is absolutely repulsive this monster walked free on Illinois' streets after allegedly committing such a heinous crime.'
This came after federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents picked up Mendoza-Gonzalez, an immigrant from Mexico, for being a 'criminal illegal alien.' He's scheduled to be deported, although the Lake County State's Attorney's Office is seeking to keep him in the U.S. to prosecute him for the Bos charges.
While the alleged crimes are indeed gruesome and would seem to be enough to put an individual in jail until trial, they surprisingly don't fall under the guidelines of the SAFE-T Act. In this instance, the act required the judge to release the defendant until trial.
Five years old, the law's effectiveness is still being debated, especially in the case of Megan Bos, whose cause of death remains under investigation. We need to remember the SAFE-T Act, pushed by the Democratic-controlled Illinois legislature, ended cash bail in the state, undercutting judicial discretion and stripping judges of the authority to determine either to jail alleged criminals before trial or set bond to allow them to roam free until their days in court.
The law prohibits Illinois judges from independently initiating detention proceedings, regardless of the case or circumstances before them. That's an important consideration, obviously overlooked by detractors of Judge Bruno.
In Lake County, State's Attorney Eric Rinehart campaigned heartily in favor of the act. It has seemed to work here until it doesn't due to quirks in the law.
A statement issued July 22 from the office of Lake County Circuit Court Chief Judge Daniel Shanes spelled out the foibles in the SAFE-T Act. It notes that the charges in the death of Bos, which include abuse of a corpse and obstructing justice, are excluded in the law. As such, it 'forbids the court from holding an individual charged with the offenses against this defendant in jail prior to trial.'
The legal community agrees that the SAFE-T Act created one of the most restrictive procedures in the nation for determining whether a person charged with a crime can be detained in jail before trial. Instead, according to the judicial statement, the act requires criminal defendants be released before trial unless a state's attorney's office charges them with certain detainable offenses specified by the statute, and a petition is filed seeking to detain defendants.
In December 2024, the Illinois Judges Association issued a statement clarifying aspects of the SAFE-T Act: 'Judges must make detention decisions within the framework of the law.'
In the case of Mendoza-Gonzalez, the State's Attorney's Office did not file a petition seeking to jail him because the charges weren't detainable. Bruno, an experienced jurist and former assistant state's attorney, placed him on pretrial release with conditions, including reporting to pretrial services and not leaving Illinois.
'Disinformation undermines our Republic,' the judicial statement from the chief judge's office said. 'Threats of violence and intimidation against judges weaken our democracy. Knowing what happens in court and understanding the law are essential to public trust.'
So true. It's a sad America when judges receive threats for doing their jobs as quacks ignore what the law spells out. Wonder how many of these online threats come from Illinois residents?
If they are Illinoisans, who should be familiar with the SAFE-T Act, they are targeting the wrong public official. They need to direct their ire at their legislative representatives who adopted the law.