Among the goals of the landmark criminal justice bill was the elimination of cash bail in the state, which would have made Illinois the first state in the nation to do so.
On Dec. 28, Cunnington ruled that part of the act violated a requirement in the state constitution that requires defendants be bailable "by sufficient sureties," except for certain offenses. He also found that it violated the separation of powers between the judiciary and legislature. The state’s constitutional language on bail seeks to generally assure that a defendant who is presumed innocent has the right to seek pretrial release while their case is pending, according to the attorney general’s office.
Raoul’s office also cited dictionary definitions of bail going back to before the United States was a country that never connected bail with the act of putting down a cash deposit.