The last two of Gov. JB Pritzker’s nominations to the Prisoner Review Board have gone down the tubes.
Members have been serving pending Senate confirmation, with senators not bringing the names for a full vote, and the Pritzker administration withdrawing the nominations only to re-submit them to start a new sixty-day clock.
Shortly before the Senate debate on Eleanor Wilson, member Oreal James quit the board. And not even all Democrats could support Wilson, who cast several votes to release felons and who also happens to be close to the family of former President Barack Obama.
Republicans described – sometimes in gruesome detail – the crimes which put the convicts away in the first place. State Sen. Mike Simmons (D-Chicago) wondered if it were proper for senators to second-guess the PRB’s decisions, and State Sen. Mattie Hunter (D-Chicago) said the grief loved ones of prisoners’ victims feel is no different from that of the family of, say, Laquan McDonald, gunned down by police in a case that sent the officer away.