Judge faces scrutiny for releasing felon on electronic monitoring before Swedish Hospital shooting

Governor JB Pritzker calls out a judge for allowing the man accused of killing a Chicago police officer to be on electronic monitoring and not in jail.

It took nearly two days to get a response, but the chief judge would not comment on the specifics of the case at all, saying he couldn't out of respect for the integrity of ongoing criminal proceedings.

Alphanso Talley, 26, the suspect in the fatal shooting of Chicago Police Officer John Bartholomew, has more than one pending case against him.

At the time he was put on electronic monitoring, he was a convicted felon with a violent history. However, questions about what happened after Talley went off the grid still linger.

He'd missed curfew twice, the battery in his electronic monitoring bracelet was dead, and he'd missed court, all just weeks before he was accused of shooting two Chicago police officers, killing one.

"In this case, I mean, it's a tragedy what happened," Pritzker said. "As you've seen in most of the cases, where Republicans have complained about the safety act has actually been a bad decision by an elected judge."

Pritzker asked if the safety act was to blame. The reason why Judge John Lyke was considering electronic monitoring at all when Tally stood before him, accused of carjacking a woman and robbing a man in 2025.

Pritzker pointed to Judge Lyke.

"A judge can make this decision, a judge should have made the decision to keep that person in jail," he said.

But he didn't. In December, Judge Lyke allowed Talley 7-15 hours on some days so he could go to college.

"The electronic monitoring system is broken. It does not work. It is not keeping people safe," said Cook County State's Attorney Eileen O'Neil Burke.

Burke said on Tuesday that her office did everything it could to keep Talley detained.

Meantime, in a federal courtroom a state away, Olivia Burgos stands charged with lying to purchase the gun eventually used in the murder of officer Bartholomew.

She told the feds that she bought the gun for her boyfriend at the time, a man named David Martinez, not Alphanso Talley.

It remains unclear how the weapon made its way from Martinez to Talley and how he managed to have it inside the Swedish Hospital, where the shooting happened.

CBS News Chicago has reached out to Judge Lyke, who's at the center of this debate alongside the electronic monitoring program as a whole, and has yet to hear back.

Talley is scheduled to be in court again on Thursday.