BRADLEY — A choose on Wednesday denied bail to the second of two folks charged with killing one police officer and wounding one other at a northern Illinois resort final week.
Darius Sullivan, 25, and Xandria Harris, 26, are charged with first-degree homicide and tried homicide within the Dec. 29 assault that killed 49-year-old Bradley police Sgt. Marlene Rittmanic and wounded her companion, Officer Tyler Bailey, who stays in vital situation.
Choose Kathy Bradshaw-Elliott denied Sullivan bail on Wednesday, two days after she denied it to Harris.
Authorities arrested Sullivan, who can also be charged with aggravated battery, in Indiana on New Yr’s Eve. Harris surrendered to police hours later in Bradley, a village of about 16,000 folks roughly 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Chicago. The (Kankakee) Each day Journal reported that no less than three different folks have been arrested in reference to the case, together with a person who was with Sullivan when he was arrested and two folks, together with Sullivan’s mom, who’re accused of impeding the seek for Sullivan and Harris.
“Anybody who assisted Darius Sullivan, whatever the state, they should be held to the fullest account, (and) they need to really feel the total pressure and weight of the regulation,” Kankakee State’s Lawyer Jim Rowe stated at a information convention Wednesday.
Based on prosecutors, the officers have been investigating a grievance about canine that have been barking in a automobile parked outdoors of a Consolation Inn when Sullivan shot Bailey within the head after he and Rittmanic knocked on the door of the room the place Sullivan and Harris have been staying. Sullivan then allegedly shot at Rittmanic, chased her down a hallway and disarmed her with Harris’ assist earlier than he shot the officer twice along with her personal gun as she pleaded for her life.
Illinois does not have the demise penalty, and Rowe stated once more Wednesday that he has requested the U.S. legal professional normal’s workplace to contemplate bringing homicide fees in opposition to Sullivan and Harris and making it a federal demise penalty case.
Rowe did not take questions on how the Justice Division would possibly search the demise penalty, however in a information launch earlier this week he stated there was “current precedent” for pursuing the demise penalty in a state like Illinois, which abolished the demise penalty in 2011.
Though murder fees practically all the time come from state prosecutors, federal prosecutors have sought the demise penalty for sure killings dedicated throughout financial institution robberies, kidnappings, and terrorist assaults.
They did so in Illinois within the 2017 abduction and killing of Yingying Zhang, a Chinese language pupil on the College of Illinois whose physique was by no means discovered. Authorities prosecuting Brendt Christensen in Zhang’s demise drew on federal legal guidelines that permit the Justice Division to hunt the demise penalty, although Christensen was finally sentenced to life in jail after the jury could not agree on the demise sentence.
There are methods for the Justice Division to pursue a federal demise penalty case in final week’s assault if it chooses to take action, stated Phil Turner, a former federal prosecutor.
“It must be a federal crime that carries the demise penalty,” Turner stated.
He stated that throughout the federal felony code there’s a cost that carries a most sentence of the demise penalty: committing homicide in the middle of a violent crime. Federal prosecutors may search the demise penalty in the event that they introduced such a cost or charged the suspects with kidnapping, as Christensen was.
“Kidnapping requires restraining somebody in opposition to their will,” he stated. “How may the protection ever argue what occurred (to Rittmanic) wasn’t a kidnapping.?”
