Kendall County Times

Kendall County State’s Attorney Eric Weis is one of several State’s Attorneys seeking to overturn the controversial Safe-T Act before it becomes law on Jan. 1. 

The hotly criticized bill is anticipated to result in the release of thousands of those awaiting criminal charges for some of the most serious crimes. 

“We try to make this a Sate's Attorneys is not political. And I know sometimes people think this is a Republican issue, it's a Democrat issue. It's not. It’s a public safety issue,” Weis told Chicago’s Morning Answer. “And I think the filing by two Democrats were the first two to file, I think shows that this is not a Republicans are just upset about the law or certain groups of people are upset. State’s Attorneys across the state are worried about what's going to happen. They know that this is unconstitutional. And that's why you're seeing many state attorneys filing lawsuits on this case. The Safe-T Act, I don't think they put whatever words they want on a bill and it makes it difficult to not support something.”

Weis and several other State’s Attorneys - bother Democrats and Republicans - have filed lawsuits noting the law fundamentally undermines the criminal justice system. 

“When we focus on the Pretrial Fairness Act, as they call it, for the cash bail system. You know, the idea we don't want to lock people up is, as we mentioned before, going on, we want to lock up some mother who stole a bag of diapers for four, nine months awaiting trial. But nobody's there right now. That's not happening right now. Tere's already laws in place for that. We're talking about violent criminals that we won't be able to hold. And when you pass a bill at 3 a.m. and it's 700 pages and you don't read it all and you realize, well, we've got some problems and then you don't fix it for a year and a half. You've got to kind of wonder, why is that happening? Why are we wanting to let violent criminals out on January 1? And so State’s Attorneys across the state have filed this lawsuit. They're very similar to each other. They find that it's unconstitutional. But as a practical sense, you know, I'm worried what's going to happen if the lawsuit is either not successful or they don't change the law in Springfield.” 

Weis noted the types of offenses under which accused criminals would be automatically freed. 

“We've taken it completely out of those hands and we put it in the hands of the General Assembly. We said, ‘okay, these people are automatically getting out’ – aggravated batteries, burglaries, aggravated DUI, death crashes…automatically,” Weis said. “They cannot be held for any reason, threatening a public official. These are ones that are not even qualified to be held. Think about that for just a second. Someone commits a robbery. We can't hold you for burglary, can’t hold you. Your family that has lost a loved one to that DUI crash is going to see that person out, what, the next day? That's what we're dealing with right now.” 

Chicago's Morning Answer host Dan Proft noted the interview on his Twitter feed.

“Kendall Co SA Eric Weis, 16 yrs as SA, explained the real-word implications of Pritzker's SAFE-T Act and took ?s from @MorningAnswer listeners. We covered a lot of ground. It's a veritable FAQ for people who want to get a handle on what is in the offing,” Proft tweeted.

Weis has served as Kendall County State’s Attorney for the past six years.

Weis noted several State's Attorneys, both Republican and Democrat, have filed lawsuits against the Pritzker administration about the statute. 100 of the 102 state attorneys are in favor of rescinding or amending the law. The only two outliers are far-left State's Attorneys Eric Rinehart for Lake County and Kim Foxx for Cook County, Madison-St. Clair Record reported.