Will County judge rejected house arrest for man later charged in Chicago police officer’s murder

A Harvey man convicted of a 2019 shooting was not placed on house arrest when he was allowed release from the Will County jail only weeks before he was charged with killing a Chicago police officer, according to court records and prosecutors.

On Oct. 16, Will County Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak granted a request from Assistant State’s Attorney Katie Rabenda to place Darion McMillian, 23, on electronic monitoring when he was charged with defrauding a drug screen test.

McMillian already was on pretrial release in a felony drug case when he was charged with defrauding the test.

But Bertani-Tomczak did not grant Rabenda’s request to place McMillian on home confinement as well, according to the Will County State’s Attorney’s Office. Rabenda asked for both given McMillian’s criminal background, which included a conviction for a 2019 shooting that wounded a man, as well as the 2020 battery of a jail inmate.

McMillian’s attorney, Paul Napolski, objected to home confinement because McMillian worked as a salesman on vehicles that “come in and out of the Illinois auto auctions,” according to a transcript of the Oct. 16 hearing.

“I think it would be more beneficial for him to be able to continue to work full time while he’s out and these cases are pretrial than for him to be sitting at home idle, doing nothing,” Napolski said Oct. 16.

Before and during the implementation of cashless bail in Illinois, judges in other cases have allowed defendants to go to work even if they’re placed on electronic monitoring and house arrest.

Several weeks after McMillian’s Oct. 16 jail release, he was charged with the Nov. 4 first-degree murder of Chicago police officer Enrique Martinez. The officer was shot to death during a traffic stop.

In light of McMillian’s murder case in Chicago, Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow has called for state lawmakers to close a “loophole” in the provision of the SAFE-T Act that eliminated cash bail in 2023.

Glasgow said his office could not request that a judge keep McMillian in jail based on his May 12 felony drug charges and his Oct. 9 charge of defrauding a drug screen test, despite his criminal background.

“The Legislature needs to close this loophole by allowing prosecutors to seek detention on individuals charged with any felony offense, or at the very least permit the prosecution to seek detention on otherwise nondetainable offenses when the offender has prior criminal history that may include violent felony convictions,” Glasgow said.

But Glasgow’s prosecutors used their power under the SAFE-T Act to petition the revocation of McMillian’s pretrial release after he was charged with defrauding a drug screen test. They filed their petition Oct. 21.

On Oct. 28, Will County Judge John Connor did not rule on the petition because McMillian’s attorney and prosecutors agreed to continue the court hearing on that petition to Nov. 21.

Prosecutors recently have filed an amended petition that included allegations from McMillian’s murder case in Chicago. The hearing on the petition to revoke the pretrial release of McMillian is set for Dec. 18.

McMillian already has been denied pretrial release in Cook County.

The Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice said Glasgow is proposing a solution that would effectively lock up everyone charged with a felony offense, do nothing to improve safety and distract the courts from “careful focus on cases with serious allegations.”

“We can mourn Officer Martinez’s death and simultaneously recognize that the best pretrial system in the world cannot predict or prevent every single new offense,” according to a statement from the organization.

In a lawsuit that failed before the Illinois Supreme Court, Glasgow and other prosecutors defended the previous pretrial system that kept defendants in jail unless they were able to pay a certain amount money set by a judge.