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Tag: Illinois state government

  • FACT FOCUS: Trump claims cashless bail increases crime, but data is inconclusive

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    As his administration faces mounting pressure to release Justice Department files related the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case, President Donald Trump is highlighting a different criminal justice issue — cashless bail.

    He suggested in a Truth Social post this week that eliminating cash bail as a condition of pretrial release from jail has led to rising crime in U.S. cities that have enacted these reforms. However, studies have shown no clear link.

    Here’s a closer look at the facts.

    TRUMP: “Crime in American Cities started to significantly rise when they went to CASHLESS BAIL. The WORST criminals are flooding our streets and endangering even our great law enforcement officers. It is a complete disaster, and must be ended, IMMEDIATELY!”

    THE FACTS: Data has not determined the impact of cashless bail on crime rates. But experts say it is incorrect to claim that there is an adverse connection.

    “I don’t know of any valid studies corroborating the President’s claim and would love to know what the Administration offers in support,” said Kellen Funk, a professor at Columbia Law School who studies pretrial procedure and bail bonding. “In my professional judgment I’d call the claim demonstrably false and inflammatory.”

    Jeff Clayton, executive director of the American Bail Coalition, the main lobbying arm of the cash bail industry, also pointed to a lack of evidence.

    “Studies are inconclusive in terms of whether bail reforms have had an impact on overall crime numbers,” he said. “This is due to pretrial crime being a small subset of overall crime. It is also difficult to categorize reforms as being ‘cashless’ or not, i.e., policies where preventative detention is introduced as an alternative to being held on bail.”

    Different jurisdictions, different laws

    In 2023, Illinois became the first state to completely eliminate cash bail when the state Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law abolishing it. The move was part of an expansive criminal justice overhaul adopted in 2021 known as the SAFE-T Act. Under the change, a judge decides whether to release the defendant prior to their trial, weighing factors such as their criminal charges, if they could pose any danger to others and if they are considered a flight risk.

    Loyola University of Chicago’s Center for Criminal Justice published a 2024 report on Illinois’ new cashless bail policy, one year after it went into effect. It acknowledges that there is not yet enough data to know what impact the law has had on crime, but that crime in Illinois did not increase after its implementation. Violent and property crime declined in some counties.

    A number of other jurisdictions, including New Jersey, New Mexico and Washington, D.C., have nearly eliminated cash bail or limited its use. Many include exceptions for high-level crimes.

    Proponents of eliminating cash bail describe it as a penalty on poverty, suggesting that the wealthy can pay their way out of jail to await trial while those with fewer financial resources have to sit it out behind bars. Critics have argued that bail is a time-honored way to ensure defendants released from jail show up for court proceedings. They warn that violent criminals will be released pending trial, giving them license to commit other crimes.

    A lack of consensus

    Studies have shown mixed results regarding the impact of cashless bail on crime. Many focus on the recidivism of individual defendants rather than overall crime rates.

    A 2024 report published by the Brennan Center for Justice saw “no statistically significant relationship” between bail reform and crime rates. It looked at crime rate data from 2015 through 2021 for 33 cities across the U.S., 22 of which had instituted some type of bail reform. Researchers used a statistical method to determine if crime rates had diverged in those with reforms and those without.

    Ames Grawert, the report’s co-author and senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Justice Program, said this conclusion “holds true for trends in crime overall or specifically violent crime.”

    Similarly, a 2023 paper published in the American Economic Journal found no evidence that cash bail helps ensure defendants will show up in court or prevents crime among those who are released while awaiting trial. The paper evaluated the impact of a 2018 policy instituted by the Philadelphia’s district attorney that instructed prosecutors not to set bail for certain offenses.

    A 2019 court decree in Harris County, Texas, requires most people charged with a misdemeanor to be released without bail while awaiting trial. The latest report from the monitoring team responsible for tracking the impact of this decision, released in 2024, notes that the number of people arrested for misdemeanors has declined by more than 15% since 2015. The number of those rearrested within one year has similarly declined, with rearrest rates remaining stable in recent years.

    Asked what data Trump was using to support his claim, the White House pointed to a 2022 report from the district attorney’s office in Yolo County, California, that looked at how a temporary cashless bail system implemented across the state to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks in courts and jails impacted recidivism. It found that out of 595 individuals released between April 2020 and May 2021 under this system, 70.6% were arrested again after they were released. A little more than half were rearrested more than once.

    A more recent paper, published in February by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, also explored the effects of California’s decision to suspend most bail during the COVID-19 pandemic. It reports that implementation of this policy “caused notable increases in both the likelihood and number of rearrests within 30 days.” However, a return to cash bail did not impact the number of rearrests for any type of offense. The paper acknowledges that other factors, such as societal disruption from the pandemic, could have contributed to the initial increase.

    Many contributing factors

    It is difficult to pinpoint specific explanations for why crime rises and falls.

    The American Bail Coalition’s Clayton noted that other policies that have had a negative impact on crime, implemented concurrently with bail reforms, make it “difficult to isolate or elevate one or more causes over the others.”

    Paul Heaton, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studies criminal justice interventions, had a similar outlook.

    “Certainly there are some policy levers that people look at — the size of the police force and certain policies around sentencing,” he said. “But there’s a lot of variation in crime that I think even criminologists don’t necessarily fully understand.”

    ___

    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

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  • Turmoil in courts on gun laws in wake of justices’ ruling

    Turmoil in courts on gun laws in wake of justices’ ruling

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — A landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment is upending gun laws across the country, dividing judges and sowing confusion over what firearm restrictions can remain on the books.

    The high court’s ruling that set new standards for evaluating gun laws left open many questions, experts say, resulting in an increasing number of conflicting decisions as lower court judges struggle to figure out how to apply it.

    The Supreme Court’s so-called Bruen decision changed the test that lower courts had long used for evaluating challenges to firearm restrictions. Judges should no longer consider whether the law serves public interests like enhancing public safety, the justices said.

    Under the Supreme Court’s new test, the government that wants to uphold a gun restriction must look back into history to show it is consistent with the country’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

    Courts in recent months have declared unconstitutional federal laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers,felony defendants and people who use marijuana. Judges have shot down a federal ban on possessing guns with serial numbers removed and gun restrictions for young adults in Texas and have blocked the enforcement of Delaware’s ban on the possession of homemade “ghost guns.”

    In several instances, judges looking at the same laws have come down on opposite sides on whether they are constitutional in the wake of the conservative Supreme Court majority’s ruling. The legal turmoil caused by the first major gun ruling in a decade will likely force the Supreme Court to step in again soon to provide more guidance for judges.

    “There’s confusion and disarray in the lower courts because not only are they not reaching the same conclusions, they’re just applying different methods or applying Bruen’s method differently,” said Jacob Charles, a professor at Pepperdine University’s law school who focuses on firearms law.

    “What it means is that not only are new laws being struck down … but also laws that have been on the books for over 60 years, 40 years in some cases, those are being struck down — where prior to Bruen — courts were unanimous that those were constitutional,” he said.

    The legal wrangling is playing out as mass shootings continue to plague the country awash in guns and as law enforcement officials across the U.S. work to combat an uptick in violent crime.

    This week, six people were fatally shot at multiple locations in a small town in rural Mississippi and a gunman killed three students and critically wounded five others at Michigan State University before killing himself.

    Dozens of people have died in mass shootings so far in 2023, including in California, where 11 people were killed as they welcomed the Lunar New Year at a dance hall popular with older Asian Americans. Last year, more than 600 mass shootings occurred in the U.S. in which at least four people were killed or wounded, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

    The decision opened the door to a wave of legal challenges from gun-rights activists who saw an opportunity to undo laws on everything from age limits to AR-15-style semi-automatic weapons. For gun rights supporters, the Bruen decision was a welcome development that removed what they see as unconstitutional restraints on Second Amendment rights.

    “It’s a true reading of what the Constitution and the Bill of Rights tells us,” said Mark Oliva, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. “It absolutely does provide clarity to the lower courts on how the constitution should be applied when it comes to our fundamental rights.”

    Gun control groups are raising alarm after a federal appeals court this month said that under the Supreme Court’s new standards, the government can’t stop people who have domestic violence restraining orders against them from owning guns.

    The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals acknowledged that the law “embodies salutary policy goals meant to protect vulnerable people in our society.” But the judges concluded that the government failed to point to a precursor from early American history that is comparable enough to the modern law. Attorney General Merrick Garland has said the government will seek further review of that decision.

    Gun control activists have decried the Supreme Court’s historical test, but say they remain confident that many gun restrictions will survive challenges. Since the decision, for example, judges have consistently upheld the federal ban on convicted felons from possessing guns.

    The Supreme Court noted that cases dealing with “unprecedented societal concerns or dramatic technological changes may require a more nuanced approach.” And the justices clearly emphasized that the right to bear arms is limited to law-abiding citizens, said Shira Feldman, litigation counsel for Brady, the gun control group.

    The Supreme Court’s test has raised questions about whether judges are suited to be poring over history and whether it makes sense to judge modern laws based on regulations — or a lack thereof— from the past.

    “We are not experts in what white, wealthy, and male property owners thought about firearms regulation in 1791. Yet we are now expected to play historian in the name of constitutional adjudication,” wrote Mississippi U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, who was appointed by President Barack Obama.

    Some judges are “really parsing the history very closely and saying ‘these laws aren’t analogous because the historical law worked in a slightly different fashion than the modern law’,” said Andrew Willinger, executive director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law.

    Others, he said, “have done a much more flexible inquiry and are trying to say ‘look, what is the purpose of this historical law as best I can understand it?’”

    Firearm rights and gun control groups are closely watching many pending cases, including several challenging state laws banning certain semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines.

    A federal judge in Chicago on Friday denied a bid to block an Illinois law that bans the sale of so-called assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, finding the law to be constitutional under the Supreme Court’s new test. A state court, however, already has partially blocked the law — allowing some gun dealers to continue selling the weapons — amid a separate legal challenge.

    Already, some gun laws passed in the wake of the Supreme Court decision have been shot down. A judge declared multiple portions of New York’s new gun law unconstitutional, including rules that restrict carrying firearms in public parks and places of worship. An appeals court later put that ruling on hold while it considers the case. And the Supreme Court has allowed New York to enforce the law for now.

    Some judges have upheld a law banning people under indictment for felonies from buying guns while others have declared it unconstitutional.

    A federal judge issued an order barring Delaware from enforcing provisions of a new law outlawing the manufacture and possession of so-called “ghost guns” that don’t have serial numbers and can be nearly impossible for law enforcement officials to trace. But another judge rejected a challenge to California’s “ghost gun” regulations.

    In the California case, U.S. District Judge George Wu, who was nominated by President George W. Bush, appeared to take a dig at how other judges are interpreting the Supreme Court’s guidance.

    The company that brought the challenge —“and apparently certain other courts” — would like to treat the Supreme Court’s decision “as a ‘word salad,’ choosing an ingredient from one side of the ‘plate’ and an entirely-separate ingredient from the other, until there is nothing left whatsoever other than an entirely-bulletproof and unrestrained Second Amendment,” Wu wrote in his ruling.

    ____

    Richer reported from Boston.

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  • Illinois high court halts elimination of cash bail

    Illinois high court halts elimination of cash bail

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    SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — The Illinois Supreme Court has halted provisions of a new law that would eliminate cash bail for criminal defendants, issuing a stay hours before the new policies were set to take effect Sunday.

    The high court said in Saturday’s order that the stay was needed to “maintain consistent pretrial procedures throughout Illinois” as the court prepares to hear arguments on the matter.

    The order said the court would coordinate an “expedited process” for an appeal the Illinois Attorney General’s Office filed Friday with the court of a local judge’s ruling, which found that eliminating cash bail for criminal defendants is unconstitutional.

    Democrats who control the Illinois General Assembly had pushed for eliminating the posting of a cash bond — a practice long used to ensure that people accused of crimes appear at trial. Opponents of requiring bail contend that it results in the poor and innocent sitting in jail awaiting their day in court while the wealthy and guilty go free.

    Republicans, meanwhile, said they fear that eliminating cash bail risks potentially releasing dangerous criminals.

    In November, Democrats sought to appease that criticism by adding numerous offenses to a list of crimes that qualify a defendant to remain jailed while awaiting trial.

    Kankakee County Circuit Judge Thomas Cunnington ruled Wednesday that the General Assembly had violated the constitution’s separation of powers clause by eliminating cash bail in the so-called SAFE-T Act criminal justice overhaul. He said the issue of bail should be left to the judiciary.

    Prosecutors and sheriffs from 64 Illinois counties had filed a lawsuit challenging the bail provision, called the Pretrial Fairness Act, although Cunnington’s ruling did not include the injunction they had sought.

    Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said Saturday he appreciated the high court’s haste to address the issue. But Raoul, a Democrat, said in a statement it was “important to note that the order issued today by the court is not a decision on the merits of the constitutionality of the SAFE-T Act.”

    Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he was confident the act would be found to be constitutional by the justices. He said in a statement the law’s changes reflect “long overdue reforms that will make Illinois families safer and prevent violent offenders from being able to buy their freedom just because they are wealthy enough.”

    Before the state Supreme Court issued its stay, Illinois counties were positioned to handle defendants’ first court appearances quite differently beginning Sunday. Cook County officials were vowing to proceed with the reforms while many counties named in the lawsuit said they would not implement them.

    The SAFE-T Act was borne of the May 2020 police-involved murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Buoyed by a state Supreme Court commission that recommended reform, lawmakers eliminated bail to ease the burden on defendants, who are innocent until proven guilty, who can’t afford the price of pretrial freedom.

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  • Taxes fall, wages rise and jaywalking OK’d by new state laws

    Taxes fall, wages rise and jaywalking OK’d by new state laws

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    Taxes will fall and minimum wages rise for residents in numerous states as a variety of new laws take effect Sunday that could impact people’s finances and, in some cases, their personal liberties.

    Some new laws could affect access to abortion. Others will ease restrictions on marijuana and concealed guns, or eliminate the need to pay to get out of jail.

    Jaywalkers will get a reprieve in California, thanks to a new law prohibiting police from stopping pedestrians for traffic violations unless they are in immediate danger of being hit by a vehicle.

    Here’s a look at some of the laws taking effect in the new year.

    ABORTION

    After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling in June, abortion access became a state issue. Laws in place in 13 states, most of them controlled by Republicans, ban abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with varying exceptions. Meanwhile, more liberal states have been extending abortion protections.

    Laws taking effect in January are not wholesale policy changes but are intended to make abortion more accessible in California and New York. Abortion already is legal in those states through viability, which is about 24 weeks gestational age.

    California will allow trained nurse practitioners, midwives and physician assistants to provide abortions without supervision from a physician. In New York, a law dealing with multiple facets of health care requires private insurers that cover births to also cover abortion services, without requiring co-payments or co-insurance.

    A new Tennessee law, adopted in May, will bar dispensing abortion pills by mail or at pharmacies, instead requiring them to be given with a physician present. But advocates on both sides of the issue believe the effect will be minimal because a ban on abortions throughout pregnancy went into effect after the Supreme Court’s ruling.

    TAXES

    Thanks to large budget surpluses, about two-thirds of the states approved permanent tax cuts or one-time rebates last year. Several of those will take effect in January.

    Income tax cuts mean less money will be withheld from workers’ paychecks in Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina and South Carolina. An Arizona income tax rate reduction to a flat 2.5% also will take effect in January, a year before originally scheduled because of strong state revenues.

    Iowa will revamp its income tax brackets as a first step toward an eventual flat tax, and it will stop taxing retirement income.

    Kansas will reduce its sales tax on groceries. Virginia will lower the tax on groceries and personal hygiene products. Colorado also will remove taxes from hygiene products, but will impose a 10-cent fee on plastic bags as a precursor to their elimination in 2024.

    Other states are providing tax incentives for law-and-order professions. Rhode Island will exempt military pensions from tax. Georgia will offer a tax credit for donations to local law enforcement foundations.

    But not all taxes will be going down. A voter-approved “millionaire tax” will take effect in Massachusetts, imposing a 4% surcharge on income of more than $1 million.

    Wyoming is taking steps to collect taxes more quickly. Producers of coal, oil, gas and uranium will have to pay taxes monthly, instead of up to 18 months after extraction. The change comes after some counties had difficulty collecting millions of dollars owed by coal companies that went bankrupt.

    WAGES

    Minimum wage workers will get a pay raise in 23 states as a result of laws passed in previous years, some of which provide annual inflationary adjustments. The increases range from an extra 23 cents in Michigan to an additional $1.50 in Nebraska, where a ballot measure approved in November will raise the minimum wage from $8 to $9.50 an hour.

    The gap continues to grow between the 20 states following the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour and the 30 others requiring more. The highest state minimum wage now will be $15.74 an hour in Washington — more than double the federal rate.

    Another law taking effect with the new year will require employers in Washington to include salary and benefits information in job postings, rather than waiting until a job offer to reveal such information. Similar salary transparency laws are in place in half a dozen other states.

    Workers in Colorado and Oregon will start seeing paycheck deductions in January to fund new paid family leave programs. But Oregon residents will have to wait until September and Colorado residents until 2024 before they can claim paid time off following a serious illness in their family, the arrival of new children or recovery from sexual assault, domestic violence, harassment or stalking.

    Ohio will offer a new way for people to spend their paychecks. Sports betting will become legal, joining more than 30 states that have adopted similar laws since a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling said it was OK.

    CRIMINAL JUSTICE

    Cash bail will be eliminated for people accused of crimes in Illinois. Requiring bonds to be posted has long been a way to ensure people who are arrested show up for their trials, but critics say the system penalizes the poor. Eliminating cash bail puts Illinois in a group of states including California, Indiana, New Jersey, Nebraska and New York that have prohibited or restricted the practice.

    Another area where social justice meets criminal justice is relaxing marijuana laws.

    In November, voters made Maryland the 21st state to legalize recreational use by adults. That begins on July 1, 2023. As an interim step at the start of the year, possession by adults of up to 1.5 ounces of cannabis will become a civil offense punishable with a maximum fine of $100.

    In Connecticut, some provisions of a 2021 law that legalized recreational marijuana also kick in, including automatic expungement of convictions for possession of less than 4 ounces of marijuana that were imposed from 2000 through September 2015. According to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, 21 other states have expungement laws.

    Alabama will become the 25th state where it will be legal to carry a concealed handgun without a permit.

    A new Missouri law will prohibit homeless people from sleeping on state land without permission. Violators could face up to 15 days in jail and a $500 fine after an initial warning. The law also prohibits state funding from being used for permanent housing for homeless people, instead directing it toward temporary shelters and assistance with substance use and mental health treatment.

    ———

    Associated Press writers from across the U.S. contributed to this report.

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  • Bond set at $50K for father of July 4 shooting suspect

    Bond set at $50K for father of July 4 shooting suspect

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    CHICAGO — A judge on Saturday set bond at $50,000 for the father of an Illinois man charged with killing seven people at a July 4 parade who is accused of helping his son get a gun license years before the shooting on a suburban Chicago main street.

    Robert Crimo Jr., 58, looked somber and tired in his first appearance before a judge since voluntarily surrendering to police Friday. His lawyer, George M. Gomez, told the judge Saturday that the father of three would be able to pay the required bond amount for his release.

    Crimo, a rare case of a parent charged after a child is accused in a mass shooting, faces seven felony counts of reckless conduct — one count for each person fatally shot during the summertime parade. Each count carries a maximum three-year prison term.

    At a brief 10-minute hearing, conducted via video link, Lake County Judge Jacquelyn Melius said she accepted an agreement between Crimo’s lawyer and prosecutors that bond be set at $50,000, which was lower than the $500,000 bond that could have been imposed.

    Gomez told the judge before she set bond that his client had been a business owner for over 30 years and had lifelong ties to the community of Highland Park, where the mass shooting occurred over the summer. Prosecutors did not oppose Crimo’s release on bond.

    “Mr. Crimo is not a danger to the community. He is not a flight risk,” Gomez said, adding that Crimo had cooperated fully with authorities since the shooting.

    Among the conditions of his release, the judge told Crimo, was that he turn in any gun licenses, as well as any weapons at his home, within 24 hours of the hearing. Crimo currently lives in Highwood, a city that borders Highland Park.

    Asked by the judge if he could hear the proceedings through his video link, Crimo said that he could — but he otherwise made no statements to the court.

    Judge Melius set his next hearing for Jan. 12.

    Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart said Friday that charges against the father were based on Crimo sponsoring his son’s application for a gun license in December 2019. His son was 19 years old at the time.

    “Parents and guardians are in the best position to decide whether their teenagers should have a weapon,” Rinehart said. “In this case, the system failed when Robert Crimo Jr. sponsored his son. He knew what he knew and he signed the form anyway.”

    Authorities have previously said the accused shooter, Robert Crimo III, attempted suicide by machete in April 2019 and in September 2019 was accused by a family member of making threats to “kill everyone.”

    Those reports came months before Crimo Jr. sponsored his son’s application.

    Gomez, the Chicago-area attorney, called the charges against the father “baseless and unprecedented” in a written statement on Friday.

    “This decision should alarm every single parent in the United States of America who according to the Lake County State’s Attorney knows exactly what is going on with their 19 year old adult children and can be held criminally liable for actions taken nearly three years later,” Gomez said.

    Gomez said his client “continues to sympathize and feel terrible for the individuals and families who were injured and lost loved ones.” But the attorney called the charges “politically motivated and a distraction from the real change that needs to happen in this country.”

    A grand jury in July indicted Robert Crimo III on 21 first-degree murder counts, 48 counts of attempted murder and 48 counts of aggravated battery, representing the seven people killed and dozens wounded in the attack on a beloved holiday event in Highland Park.

    Legal experts have said it’s rare for an accused shooter’s parent or guardian to face charges — in part because it’s difficult to prove such charges.

    In one notable exception, a Michigan prosecutor last year filed involuntary manslaughter charges against the parents of a teen accused of fatally shooting four students at his high school. A January trial date in that case has been delayed while the state appeals court considers an appeal by the parents.

    Authorities have previously said that Illinois State Police reviewed Crimo III’s December 2019 gun license application and found no reason to deny it because he had no arrests, no criminal record, no serious mental health problems, no orders of protection and no other behavior that would disqualify him.

    But following the parade shooting, public records showed that Crimo III attempted suicide by machete in April 2019, according to a police report obtained by The Associated Press that noted a “history of attempts.”

    In September 2019, police received a report from a family member that Crimo III had a collection of knives and had threatened to “kill everyone.”

    Both Crimo III and his mother disputed the threat of violence at the time. Police have said father Robert Crimo Jr. later told investigators the knives belonged to him, and authorities returned them.

    Robert Crimo Jr. has shown up at several pretrial hearings for his son this year, nodding in greeting when his son entered the courtroom shackled and flanked by guards. The father has been a familiar face around Highland Park, where he was once a mayoral candidate and was well known for operating convenience stores.

    In media interviews after the shooting, Robert Crimo Jr. had said he did not expect to face charges and did not believe he did anything wrong by helping his son get a gun license through the state’s established process.

    ———

    This story corrects paragraph three to reflect that the maximum penalty for each count is three years in prison, not six.

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  • Father of July 4 shooting suspect charged with 7 felonies

    Father of July 4 shooting suspect charged with 7 felonies

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    CHICAGO — The father of an Illinois man charged with killing seven people in a mass shooting at a July 4 parade in a Chicago suburb has been charged with seven felony counts of reckless conduct, prosecutors announced Friday.

    Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart said Robert Crimo Jr. surrendered to police on Friday and will have a bond hearing Saturday. Rinehart said the charges are based on Crimo sponsoring his then 19-year-old son’s application for a gun license in 2019.

    “Parents and guardians are in the best position to decide whether their teenagers should have a weapon,” Rinehart said. “In this case, the system failed when Robert Crimo Jr. sponsored his son. He knew what he knew and he signed the form anyway.”

    Rinehart wouldn’t further discuss what led his office to file the charges this week. Authorities have previously said the accused shooter, Robert Crimo III, attempted suicide by machete in April 2019 and in September 2019 was accused by a family member of making threats to “kill everyone.”

    Both those reports came months before Crimo Jr. sponsored his son’s application in December 2019.

    Chicago-area attorney George M. Gomez said by phone Friday that he was representing Robert Crimo Jr. in the newly announced criminal case. He declined to answer questions but emailed a statement that described the charges as “baseless and unprecedented.”

    “This decision should alarm every single parent in the United States of America who according to the Lake County State’s Attorney knows exactly what is going on with their 19 year old adult children and can be held criminally liable for actions taken nearly three years later,” the statement from Gomez said. “These charges are absurd and we will fight them every step of the way.

    Gomez said Crimo Jr. “continues to sympathize and feel terrible for the individuals and families who were injured and lost loved ones,” but the attorney called the charges “politically motivated and a distraction from the real change that needs to happen in this country.”

    A grand jury in July indicted Robert Crimo III on 21 first-degree murder counts, 48 counts of attempted murder and 48 counts of aggravated battery, representing the seven people killed and dozens wounded in the attack on a beloved holiday event in Highland Park.

    Until Friday, Rinehart had refused to discuss whether the man’s parents could face charges connected to the killings.

    Legal experts have said it’s rare for an accused shooter’s parent or guardian to face charges — in part because it’s difficult to prove such charges.

    In one notable exception, a Michigan prosecutor last year filed involuntary manslaughter charges against the parents of a teen accused of fatally shooting four students at his high school. A January trial date in that case has been delayed while the state appeals court considers an appeal by the parents.

    Authorities have previously said that Illinois State Police reviewed Crimo III’s December 2019 gun license application and found no reason to deny it because he had no arrests, no criminal record, no serious mental health problems, no orders of protection and no other behavior that would disqualify him.

    But following the parade shooting, public records showed that Crimo III attempted suicide by machete in April 2019, according to a police report obtained by The Associated Press that noted a “history of attempts.”

    In September 2019, police received a report from a family member that Crimo III had a collection of knives and had threatened to “kill everyone.”

    Both Crimo III and his mother disputed the threat of violence at the time. Police have said father Robert Crimo Jr. later told investigators the knives belonged to him, and authorities returned them.

    Robert Crimo Jr. has shown up at several pretrial hearings for his son this year, nodding in greeting when he son entered the courtroom shackled and flanked by guards. The father is a longtime resident of Highland Park and a familiar face around the city, where he was once a mayoral candidate and was well known for operating convenience stores.

    In media interviews after the shooting, Robert Crimo Jr. had said he did not expect to face charges and did not believe he did anything wrong by helping his son get a gun license through the state’s established process.

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