Lake County Gazette

Illinois state Sen. Craig Wilcox (R-McHenry) is one of eight Republican lawmakers to have signed off on a letter to Gov. J.B. Pritzker questioning the logic of several prison sentence commutations the governor recently ordered in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

“It comes down to [the fact that] we have a governor making executive decisions without bringing in the legislature, and it’s our responsibility to question the basis of the executive order,” Wilcox told the Lake County Gazette. “As long as this trend continues, there probably will be other letters.”

Wilcox joined GOP senators Jason Plummer, Brian Stewart, Chapin Rose, Jil Tracy, Paul Schimpf, Dan McConchie and Dale Righter in demanding answers about at least some of 19 commutations Pritzker has signed off on since mid-March. The group specifically pointed to the case of Alma Durr, a woman serving a life-sentence for the 1996 murder of her 21-month-old son before having her sentence commuted by the governor even though no inmates at the prison where she was being held are known to have tested positive for COVID-19.  

“What we’re being told by the governor’s office is that the releases were of people with underlying medical conditions or individuals that had served most of their sentence and could be safely released into society,” Wilcox said. “But now that more details have started to come out, they’re showing something else. We’re seeing serious criminals and offenders being released.”

While the governor insists all the commutations he made were recommended by the Prison Review Board, Wilcox says there still needs to be more transparency to justify some of the actions.  

“We feel the governor needs to understand that he needs to act responsibly whenever turning to emergency statutes and part of that means accepting more input from legislators,” Wilcox said.