BELLEVILLE, Illinois — During the first two days without cash bail in Illinois, prosecutors at the St. Clair County State's Attorney's Office went four-for-five in their first arguments to persuade a judge to keep a felony defendant behind bars as they await their trial.
Two of them, heard in Judge John O'Gara's court on Monday, involved first-degree murder charges. The defendants would have likely been held without bond under the old system.
On Tuesday morning, three more complicated cases came up in Judge Sara Rice's courtroom. All of them were felonies but involved extenuating circumstances.
One of them, a Class 1 Felony charge against Monteza Stevens, did not include a gun. None of the alleged victims suffered bodily injury. According to prosecutors, Stevens was at a crime scene in June when one of his former co-workers broke into her parents' home and stole their safe.
"He just happened to be in the car with them at the time and didn't know that was going on," St. Clair County Public Defender Cathy MacElroy said. "He thought he was taking her over to get some of her stuff."
Crime scene investigators returned fingerprint results from the stolen safe that identified the woman's boyfriend.
MacElroy argued the other two defendants in the case, both of whom who used to work with Stevens at a local restaurant job, no longer work there and would likely not come into contact with him again if he was released from jail before his trial.
While those arguments and testimony may ultimately persuade a jury during a trial, they were not enough to prompt the judge to release him during his detention hearing.
"The court does find the defendant committed a qualifying offense," Judge Rice said. "Residential burglary is a forcible felony. I am going to order that he be detained. I do find that he poses a real and present danger to the community."
In another case, prosecutors asked the judge to keep Ryan Alamia in jail until his trial. According to a seven-page police report, a woman told officers she suffered two broken ribs and a punctured lung during an altercation with him in Caseyville on the night of Sept. 6.
Alamia, who had been previously convicted of domestic battery with bodily harm, "had just gotten out of prison," Assistant State's Attorney Jeff Reel told the judge. "She stated she and the defendant got into a verbal altercation, and the defendant started hitting her with a closed fist and dragging her through the trailer park by her hair."
"Apparently, the defendant was punching her in the back of her head and her ribs," Reel said. "It appears this defendant is a domestic batterer. If there is any case where detention is appropriate, this would be the case."
MacElroy called Alamia's sister to testify in his defense. She told the court that she came over to pick Alamia and the other woman up on the night of the altercation. She claimed the couple was running through a field to escape a separate run-in with someone who had come to repossess a vehicle when she tripped and fell and suffered a small gash on her leg.
"She went to the hospital days later," Alamia's sister claimed, offering text messages that appeared to contradict the woman's statements to police.
Judge Rice declined to release him and instead granted prosecutors' requests to keep him detained in jail until his trial.
"The court does find by clear and convincing evidence that you do pose a real and present danger to the community," Judge Rice told him. "You are therefore detained."
During the fifth felony detention hearing, MacElroy persuaded a judge to let Latara Atkins, a breast-feeding mother, go home to her two-month-old baby girl while she waits for her trial on felony charges for aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.
Within three hours, she was released from the St. Clair County Jail as the first felony defendant to be released without having to post bond.
"I'm so happy to get back to my baby and my family. I was just thirsty to get out to them," Atkins told 5 On Your Side.
Police say she struck the father of her child with a stick in a drunken fight last Thursday night. The judge said she can go home, but can't see him for 72 hours, and can't possess a gun at all until her trial.
Under the old law, she would've likely been ordered to pay a significant money bond before she could've been released. Her mother told reporters outside the courtroom that morning that she would not have been able to afford bond.
"I honestly don't know what I would've done," Atkins said she was released. "I probably would've had to find a way to come up with the money, but I'm glad they did come up with this [new law] so I could get back to my baby. She's only two months and she really needs me."
The new law that reunited her with her daughter blocked another family's reunion with their loved one.
"They need to get better with the justice system," the man's aunt said.
They didn't tell us his name, but said he faced a judge on Tuesday to answer for a shooting incident three months ago. During the hearing, he found he wouldn't get out until his trial.
Outside the jail, his mother said she had saved up thousands of dollars in hopes that she could eventually post bond. She will no longer have that chance.
While members of his family said they appreciated the end of cash bail, they expressed frustration at a number of other fines and fees that present barriers to communicating with him while he remains in jail.
"We have to pay for everything," his girlfriend said, rattling off a list of expenses charged for video calls, stamps, and other forms of communications that she claims cost her a running total of $670 over the last several weeks.
The jail, which is equipped with in-person visiting stations, won't allow her to use them to see him. Instead, the jail continues to use a pandemic-era virtual video system and charges visitors to log onto a video call and talk with him remotely.
She brought their daughter, family, and friends to wave outside a jail cell window.
"This is how we do it," she said. "This is how we can afford to see him: through a window."