Marion County State’s Attorney Tim Hudspeth has announced he will run for re-election next year.
Hudspeth is currently in his first term as State’s Attorney.
“I like my job. I am happy where I am and proud of what the office is accomplishing. We’ve had staff issues just like a lot of departments in the County and private businesses in southern Illinois. But I think we’ve shown when it comes to violent crime and crimes against children, we take things seriously. We prioritize what cases we go after more aggressively than others. It’s unfortunate that we have to do that, but we have limited resources.”
Hudspeth notes there is only four days a month set aside for felony trials in Marion County. He currently has two assistant state’s attorney and seeking to fill the third position. At one point he was down to just one assistant.
Hudspeth realizes state’s attorneys are the most popular the day they take office.
“I recognize everything this office does has an effect on people…on the public, the defendant, on victimes…so we don’t take our job lightly. We put a lot of thought and work into prosecuting cases whether its a traffic case or a murder. Here recently in the past five or six months we have shown that with several jury trials, aggravated battery to police, 2 murder trials. We are prioritizing those violent crimes and are getting good results and that is what we are going to continue to do.”
Hudspeth notes he seeks to detain almost all of those who are eligible to be detained under the new cashless bail system, with the final decision by the judge. He says unfortunately there are some types of cases where he feels there are public safety issues where they are not allow to detain the suspects.
Hudspeth feels the legislature will make some changes in the SAFE-T act, but says the cashless bond system will not go away.
Hudspeth says while the state has provided an additional $100,000 a year to the Marion County Public Defender’s office to handle extra work brought on by the SAFE-T act, no additional money has been provided to State’s Attorney’s. He’s thankful for the Marion County Board stepping up with some additional funds to allow him to keep staff.
