The man accused of killing a North Side police officer and critically wounding his partner while escaping from Endeavor Swedish Hospital on Saturday is set to return to court for a full detention hearing Thursday morning.
Alphanso Talley will come before Cook County Judge Thedford D’Anthony at 11:30 a.m. for D’Anthony to rule on whether Talley, 26, will be held on the litany of charges against him while he awaits trial. Talley’s lawyer asked to have the hearing continued at his initial appearance Tuesday, saying she hadn’t yet had a chance to have a confidential conversation with her client.
Hospital shooting of 2 Chicago cops shows gaps in Cook County’s electronic-monitoring system
When Talley first appeared in court Monday, the room was packed with Chicago police brass and family members of the two policemen who had been shot. Assistant States’ Attorney Mike Pekara said Albany Park (17th) district police had initially arrested Talley for an armed robbery at a dollar store, but took him to Swedish Hospital after he told them he’d swallowed several bags of drugs and was having trouble breathing.
At the hospital, Pekara said Talley was given a hospital gown to wear but kept a blanket over him. When Officer John Bartholomew uncuffed him from the bed for a CT scan, Talley allegedly reached under the blanket, took out a 10-millimeter Glock 29 and shot Bartholomew, killing him, as well as a second officer.
He then shot out a hospital window to escape the building, Pekara said, and was arrested a short time later from the 2600 block of West Carmen Avenue in the Lincoln Square neighborhood.
Talley on Tuesday was briefly back before the judge who ordered him released on electronic monitoring to address the failure to appear warrant that issued after his ankle monitor went offline and he missed court. That judge, John Lyke, has faced significant scrutiny in the days following the shooting for his decision to have Talley released while he faced other pending charges of armed robbery and carjacking. That criticism has extended to Gov. JB Pritzker and some local elected officials in Chicago, who
It’s also renewed the spotlight on Cook County’s use of electronic monitoring. The program, taken over by the Office of the Chief Judge last year, now classifies any lapse longer than three hours as a major violation that needs to be reviewed by a judge within a day. In Talley’s case, a review did take place, but in more than twice the time required under the recently tightened policy.
Republican lawmakers who have been longtime opponents of the Pretrial Fairness Act, which eliminated cash bail in Illinois, have seized the case as a new knock on the act. Their calls for changes to the act echoed that of John Catanzara, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 and Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza following Talley’s first hearing, when Mendoza said the case was “a consequence of a failed system.”
But Northwestern Law Professor Stephanie Kollmann, speaking to the Tribune Wednesday, observed that Lyke had acted within his judicial discretion under the law and used the information available to him at that point —including Talley’s completion of anger management courses and “a pretty strong support system” present in court the day of his decision.
She pointed out that the shooting allegedly took place after Talley was already in police custody, and that it is still not clear how the gun made it into Swedish Hospital following his arrest.
“I don’t know that’s a pretrial law issue,” Kollmann said. “There may be a policing practice issue. and I think it makes everyone uncomfortable to say so.”
