A former federal prosecutor in his first months on the bench is navigating Winnebago County courts through a brand-new system of pretrial release for Illinois that operates without cash bail.
A Schaumburg native with family ties to Rockford, Scott R. Paccagnini, 47, was hired by the 17th Judicial Circuit Court in February and became an associate judge in March.
With the end of bond court, Chief Judge John Lowry tapped Paccagnini to take on what is now being called “initial appearance court.”
Although uncharted territory for officials working in Illinois state courts, it came naturally for the new judge whose background was in the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“It’s very similar to what I was dealing with in federal court,” Paccagnini said. “There are lot of similarities between the Federal Bail Reform Act and the Pretrial Fairness Act. … There are differences, but there are also a lot of similarities. Bond court to me was different because we didn’t have cash bond in the federal system.”
The Pretrial Fairness Act ended cash bail and created an entirely new paradigm in Illinois pretrial proceedings. Unless prosecutors file a petition to detain, there is a presumption that the court is going to set conditions for a defendant’s release before trial under the new law.
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Conditions have included things like “no contact orders” which prohibit a defendant from speaking with or approaching an alleged crime victim or someone else connected to a case. They also include orders not to break the law, which could mean jail time even if the charge is not one of the enumerated “detainable” offenses.
Advocates for ending cash bail argued that it tended to punish families of poor people who were merely accused of a crime and had not yet been convicted of wrongdoing. Prosecutors can petition that defendants accused of certain crimes be detained before trial if they are flight risk or a danger to the community.
To throw someone in jail before trial, Paccagnini must decide if there is “clear and convincing” evidence the defendant would not return to court or poses a public safety risk.
Paccagnini has a degree in English from Truman State University and graduated from the Chicago-Kent College of Law with honors in 2002.
He served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois in Rockford from 2011 to 2023. Previously, he worked in Washington D.C. as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller and Currency in the asset forfeiture and money laundering section and as a law clerk to Federal Judge P. Michael Mahoney in Rockford.
Court officials say the pretrial release system they developed seems to be working so far.
A team of judges, prosecutors and public defenders and lawyers spent more than a year studying the new law and preparing paperwork and processes for it to run smoothly.
It was ready to go in January, Paccagnini said, but implementation was delayed until Sept. 18 when a challenge to the constitutionality of the law was rejected by the Illinois Supreme Court.
Illinois became the first state to end the use of cash bail.
Jeff Kolkey can be reached at (815) 987-1374, via email at jkolkey@rrstar.com and on Twitter @jeffkolkey.
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