North Carolina has passed Iryna’s Law.
Its main provisions enforce stricter pre-trial release conditions, mandate mental health evaluations for some defendants and expedite the process for implementing capital punishment. The death penalty changes were a last-minute amendment introduced by Phil Berger (R), president pro tempore of the state Senate, which caused Democrats to walk out.
The statute virtually eliminates cashless bail for “violent offenses” and certain repeat offenders, as well as expanding the definition of “violent offenses.” For all offenses, it completely removes the condition to release a defendant on a written promise to appear.
The fact that it had to be passed due to activist judges who continue to allow felons with multiple arrests for violent crimes to walk free, boggles the mind. At least NC took action.
On the flip side, we have Illinois. In Chicago a woman was set on fire by a felon with 72 arrests, most recently in August when he knocked a social worker senseless (she is still having cognitive issues). The governor, Pritzker, is willing to ‘tweak’ the SAFE-T Act that allows hardened criminals to walk without bail and gave judges carte blanche to decide if a criminal should be held in jail.
The SAFE-T Act was signed into law in 2021 and went into effect in Sept. 2023. The law made several changes to the criminal justice system, notably eliminating cash bail and allowing a judge to decide if a defendant should await trial in jail or not.
Considering the track record of judges in blue cities, allowing them that kind of latitude is clearly backfiring. And a ‘tweak’ to a craptastic law is a fundamentally weak answer to the crime that has taken over Chicago and other blue cities in Illinois.
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