Alphanso Talley knows Judge John Lyke Jr. well, having appeared in his courtroom for years.
In December, Lyke placed Talley, 26, of South Shore on electronic monitoring after the convicted felon was charged with armed carjacking and armed robbery.
Talley’s now charged with killing a Chicago police officer and wounding another in a bizarre ambush attack at Swedish Hospital on Saturday.
And Lyke is being blamed for allowing him to previously walk free.
On Tuesday, they came face to face again for a few brief moments. Talley was supposed to answer for the arrest warrants issued in his cases before Lyke, but the judge punted the hearing to a later date.
Some officials have seized on Lyke’s decision to grant Talley leniency, saying it exposes the potentially fatal flaws of Cook County’s electronic monitoring program and the state’s cashless bail system.
Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke’s office had petitioned to keep Talley in custody in the cases before Lyke. On Tuesday, she told reporters the electronic monitoring system was “broken,” insisting that it “is not keeping people safe.”
“We make sure that we put every bit of information in front of a judge to establish why we believe this person presents a danger, as we did in this case,” O’Neill Burke said. “We established that he had four pending violent felonies, and in spite of that, he was placed on electronic monitoring.”
Before Saturday’s shooting, Talley stepped into an Albany Park dollar store, snatched a bundle of cash and repeatedly pistol-whipped the clerk, breaking her nose, according to a police report.
Officers soon tracked Talley to an alley a couple miles away using a GPS device hidden in the stolen money, which was allegedly in his pocket, stained with blood. The arrest report shows the cops also found the victim’s wallet, but not the gun Talley allegedly attacked her with.
He claimed he’d swallowed bags of drugs, so an ambulance took him on a short but fateful trip to Swedish Hospital, the report says. He was escorted there by cops from the Albany Park District — but not the ones listed in the report as the arresting officers.
Prosecutors said Talley eventually pulled a gun from under a hospital blanket and shot the two cops, killing 10-year police veteran John Bartholomew and critically wounding the other officer. Talley then shot out a hospital window and fled naked before he was found hiding under a nearby porch, prosecutors said.
While the robbery report offers new details about the events that led up to the shooting, it’s still unclear how Talley allegedly got the gun past police and into a secure hospital.
Arrest, release, repeat
Talley was arrested for the armed robbery and carjacking in April 2025. At the time, he was on electronic monitoring on charges of possessing a stolen vehicle and battering a correctional officer in other cases before Lyke.
Talley had been held in custody last year, but Lyke again decided to release him on electronic monitoring in December. The judge later amended his order to allow Talley to leave the house to attend community college and go to the dentist, court records show.
The state’s attorney’s office opposed Talley’s release in the robbery and carjacking cases.
“The fact that the defendant has four cases does lead the state to believe that there are no conditions or combinations of conditions that can guarantee the defendant’s compliance with any other form of pretrial release, including electronic monitoring,” an assistant state’s attorney told Lyke in December, according to a transcript.
But Lyke told the court he’d seen a positive change in Talley over the years, while still acknowledging that having four pending cases was “egregious” and “may in certain instances shock the [conscience].”
“Mr. Talley has been in front of this court since at least 2023,” Lyke said. “This court has had an opportunity to watch him. I have seen attitude adjustments. He came in this court in 2023 extremely angry.”
Shortly after he was released in December, Talley was paroled in the two earlier cases in which he was convicted of battering the officer and possessing the stolen car.
Then in March, Talley missed two curfews. Days later, his electronic monitoring device turned off and didn’t turn back on.
He didn’t showed up for a March 11 court date, and warrants were issued for his arrest. But Talley wasn’t arrested until Saturday, after allegedly violently robbing the dollar store.
Some local officials said this shows the Pretrial Fairness Act, which eliminated cash bail in Illinois, is failing.
“No reasonable person breathing should think that it’s OK to put an armed robber carjacker on an electronic monitor and send them on their merry way,” Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza told reporters Monday, following Talley’s first court appearance in the shooting.
The state’s attorney’s office argued the case exposed clear gaps in the county’s electronic monitoring system, which was taken over by the chief judge’s office last year. The office of Chief Judge Charles S. Beach II didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“I have always said that in order to have an effective system, if there is a violation there needs to be sworn law enforcement officers who can go and arrest somebody if they’re violating the terms of their electronic monitoring,” O’Neill Burke said Tuesday. “We do not have that.”
Advocates for bail reform argued Lyke had every ability to detain Talley under a historic overhaul of the state’s criminal justice system.
“Unfortunately, as we have seen time and time again since the passage of the Pretrial Fairness Act, cynical individuals are once again attempting to turn the pain of others into their own political gain,” the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice said Monday.
“What is clear from publicly-available information is that there was absolutely nothing in the law that prohibited the detention of Alphanso Talley while he was awaiting trial. Any statement to the contrary is manifestly false.”
Talley will face a full detention hearing on Thursday, when prosecutors are expected to proffer the preliminary facts of the shooting case. Talley’s public defender is also expected to provide mitigating evidence.
Earlier this week, his mother told the Sun-Times that he has long suffered from bipolar disorder and had been institutionalized.