Aimee Stewart spent greater than six months within the Prepare dinner County Jail after a decide refused to launch her beneath Illinois’ Pretrial Equity Act, declaring the cashless bail regulation unconstitutional. However now, the state’s highest courtroom has struck down that call, ordered Stewart freed, and made it clear that trial judges can not use “inherent authority” to sidestep the state’s no-cash-bail system.
Stewart, 38, was charged after police stated she stole her grandmother’s automobile in late 2023. The grandmother reportedly advised police she gave Stewart a trip to a prepare station and Stewart drove away with the automobile.
Oak Garden officers arrested her two days later, discovering her within the again seat throughout a visitors cease. Prosecutors charged her with possession of a stolen motorcar, a Class 2 felony that’s not detainable beneath the Pretrial Equity Act, higher often known as the SAFE-T Act. Stewart was initially launched with situations.
However she repeatedly missed courtroom—on January 2, March 21, June 5, September 4, and October 15, 2024—resulting in a string of warrants. She turned herself in on November 5, 2024, and was additionally charged with possessing a managed substance for medication she allegedly had when she surrendered, courtroom filings present.
At her listening to, Stewart promised to not miss one other courtroom date. However Decide Steven Rosenblum was unmoved.
“Oh, after all not. I completely agree with you, Miss Stewart, it is not going to occur once more as a result of I’m not releasing you,” he stated from the bench.
Rosenblum made it clear he was taking direct intention at Illinois’ no-cash-bail regulation.
“It’s unimaginable to manage justice to Miss Stewart beneath the current state of affairs with the Pretrial Equity Act,” he declared. “This courtroom will not associate with that state of affairs. It’s 4 warrants earlier than we even get to an arraignment date on Miss Stewart. So I’m not releasing her. Defendant is to be detained.”
Based on Stewart’s protection attorneys, Rosenblum knew sanctions for failing to seem have been capped at 30 days however he reasoned that lawmakers had stripped him of the discretion he wanted.
“The statute doesn’t give me a possibility as a decide to manage justice,” he stated in courtroom. “As utilized to an individual like Miss Stewart, [it] is, fairly frankly, unconstitutional.”
Prosecutors beneath newly elected State’s Legal professional Eileen O’Neill Burke tried a special tack in January 2025, submitting a detention petition beneath the regulation’s “flight threat” provision. Stewart’s attorneys argued the transfer was improper as a result of it wasn’t based mostly on new data. Rosenblum declined to think about the petition and primarily invited the next courtroom to intervene.
“So this can be a case that must be determined by the Supreme Courtroom,” he stated, including that maybe legislators would “repair it” if the justices agreed with him.
“I don’t know the place we’re going with ever getting justice as a result of any person could possibly be on the market for 20 totally different warrants and they’d don’t have any discretion apart from to do a [30 day] sanction,” Rosenblum stated. “So, both manner, we could have the steerage that we’d like that’s needed in these instances.”
The case reached the Illinois Supreme Courtroom this spring.
Assistant Public Defender Rebecca Cohen argued, “It’s not the position of judges to rebound coverage concerns as a result of they suppose lacking courtroom is extra critical than the legislature does.”
Particular Assistant Legal professional Normal Alan Spellberg countered that judges retain “inherent authority” to disclaim launch when satisfied a defendant received’t seem regardless of the situations.
On Could 21, the Supreme Courtroom ordered Stewart’s quick launch whereas the case was pending. In its full opinion issued September 18, Justice Lisa Holder White wrote for a unanimous courtroom that the Pretrial Equity Act “doesn’t violate the separation of powers clause” and that Rosenblum “had no authority, beneath the Act or the Illinois Structure, to indefinitely detain petitioner pending trial.”
The courtroom stated Rosenblum ignored obtainable instruments equivalent to sanctions, modified launch situations, and even the flexibility to proceed with trial in absentia.
“To permit a courtroom to avoid the Act as an train of its inherent authority to detain a defendant indefinitely pretrial would render the Act elective,” Holder White wrote.
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