Proposed Illinois law would cut all prison sentences in half: ‘Fair’ or ‘outrageous’?

A proposed bill could grant JoAnn Cunningham – who is serving 35 years for killing her 5-year-old son AJ in their Crystal Lake home – freedom after completing only half her sentence.

Should the measure become law, it also could free the child’s father, AJ Freund Sr., who was sentenced to 30 years for crimes tied to his son’s murder, after serving 15. His term currently is ordered to be served at 85%, which would keep him in prison for about 25 years.

Those are only two examples of what would happen should House Bill 5219, sponsored by state Rep. Barbara Hernandez, a Democrat from Aurora, and co-sponsors Kevin John Olickal and Lilian Jiminez, becomes law. The measure, if passed during the so-called lame-duck session in January, would allow incarcerated people who’ve been convicted of even the most egregious felonies – including first-degree murder, aggravated predatory criminal sexual assault of a child and driving under the influence of alcohol or a controlled substance resulting in death – to serve only half the imposed sentence.

Under the current truth-in-sentencing laws, most prison terms in Illinois, except for those for murder, are not served in full. Convictions for offenses of DUI, sexual abuse, sexual assault and weapons charges are required to be served at 50%, 75% or 85%, depending on the class of the felony and details of specific cases. This new proposed law would require that all prison terms – regardless of the crime – be served at 50%, including murder, except where a term of natural life is imposed. The law would work retroactively, reducing sentences of those already serving time in prison, lawmakers said.

More fair and effective?

Hernandez said the bill was brought to her by FAMM-Families for Justice Reform. The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit works to create a “more fair and effective justice system that respects our American values of individual accountability and dignity while keeping our communities safe,” according to its website. The group addresses what it says is the ineffectiveness of lengthy incarcerations and the impact on families and taxpayers.

Shaneva D. McReynolds, an Illinois policy consultant with FAMM, said she proposed the bill after she and legislators, including Hernandez, met with women incarcerated at the Logan Correctional Center in downstate Lincoln. Slashing all sentences in half would give those imprisoned “hope for a future,” knowing they would one day walk out of prison, get a second chance, become taxpaying citizens with voting rights, contribute to society and raise families, McReynolds said.

This proposed 50% reduction is earned by attending classes and self-help programs and working while incarcerated, preparing inmates with skills they can use to get jobs and establish their lives when released, she said.

McReynolds, of Frankfort, said the bill would restore truth-in-sentencing to what it was before August 1995, when she said the sentencing rules were changed, creating arbitrary guidelines making longer requirements for more serious crimes.

“It is alarming,” McReynolds said. “No matter what the offense, the Illinois Constitution says the purpose of incarceration is to restore the individual to useful citizenship. So, if our system is more focused on rehabilitation and not locking them away for decades at a time, what’s the reason? Why?”

People in prison helped write the bill

McReynolds said the bill was written with the help of incarcerated people at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, and has “a lot of support” from legislators and others. There is a plan to have a meeting with all stakeholders “who want to see it passed.” She also welcomes conversations with those who oppose the bill, she said.

Hernandez said the bill is intended “to start a conversation and find ways to reform truth-in-sentencing in Illinois.”

“For many decades, there have been cases in which many individuals have been incarcerated since they were 18 with no chance to review their case and be able to show how much they have done since then to receive a second chance,” Hernandez said. “Many have gone to college, received work certifications and even started nonprofits.”

Hernandez said she has heard from inmates who have expressed remorse for their crimes “and would like to spend the last few years of their life with family members. Many of them are ill and want to go back home.”

Kenneally: Bill trivializes crime victims’ suffering

However, McHenry County State’s Attorney Patrick Kenneally said the proposed law lessens the seriousness of crime and dismisses the lifelong suffering of crime victims and their families.

“Reducing penalties by half for things like murder and child rape necessarily weakens the internal norms we all have against injurious conduct by downgrading its wrongness and declaring the injury to victims less grievous,” Kenneally said. “The injury suffered by a victim who has lost a loved one, been brutally sexually assaulted or dreadfully injured is infinite because a human life, health and ease, and dignity is of infinite worth.

“A trivial or insufficient criminal response communicates clearly that what victims have so unfairly suffered, continue to suffer and will forever suffer is collateral – a message which, if internalized, is devastating to any type of healing and moving forward.”

Hernandez said she does “not want to disrespect [crime victims] in any way. However, our correctional systems are full, facilities are dilapidated and, as taxpayers, we keep paying for it.”

She added that it’s “time to look into ways we can provide resources and opportunities” to those who have been in prison “for decades to rebuild their lives outside of IDOC.”

Still, lawmakers including state Sen. Craig Wilcox, R-McHenry, said “the legislation is bad for Illinois” and he will vote against it.

Wilcox: ‘Outrageous,’ ‘bad for Illinois’

“These are the kinds of outrageous bills we are seeing from progressive Democrats in the General Assembly,” Wilcox said. “Legislation like this does nothing to address horrific crime numbers coming out of Chicago and are indicative of how progressive Democrats hold the rights of the convicted ahead of the rights of crime victims and families.”

But Woodstock-based defense attorney Brian Stevens said the bill “finally would bring what I consider actual truth-in-sentencing to the Code of Corrections.”

The current system, he said – with “enumerated offenses set at 85% and 75%, the lack of day-for-day credits and higher percentage times to be served – not only made the calculations confusing for inmates but also created an arbitrary set of offenses to which they were applied.”

A day-for-day credit system “actually puts the sentencing discretion back in the hands of the courts to determine aggregate sentences based on the mandated sentencing factors, as applied to each case, rather than requiring a legislatively created multiplier over which the courts had no control,” Stevens said.

The bill, if passed, would require that within six months after the effective date of the amendatory act, the IDOC is required to “recalculate each incarcerated person’s release date by crediting each person one day sentence credit for each day the incarcerated person has spent in prison on the current sentence,” according to the bill.

Someone serving a prison term of natural life would be eligible to accumulate sentence credit in the event their “sentence is reduced to something less than a sentence of natural life imprisonment, [and] it can thereafter be credited toward his or her new sentence,” according to the bill.

McReynolds, whose first husband was murdered and the offender never caught, fought for the early release of her second husband, who was incarcerated for a different crime. She questions why the focus should be on “giving hope to just a handful of individuals if everyone’s goal is to lower recidivism and get everyone rehabilitated and returned home.”

“Long sentences do not reduce crime,” she said. “When you give a person [the chance] to rehabilitate themselves, you are giving individuals the hope to say, ‘Go redeem yourself and rehabilitate yourself and earn this reduction.’”

She said despite being a widowed mother with a 2-month-old baby by a person who committed a crime, she still advocates for laws that affect incarcerated people.

“I believe that people are not the sum of the total of their mistakes or their decisions,” McReynolds said. “That is why this bill is so super important.”