A Will County judge plans to decide on Feb. 10 whether to allow the pretrial release of a Michigan man facing a charge of his wife’s 1988 murder.
The SAFE-T-Act detention hearing held yesterday in the case against Gilbert Bernal Sr. Bernal is accused of his wife’s murder in 1988. Attorney For Bernal, Dave Carlson, stated there was no physical evidence he murdered his wife Joan and that Will County’s criminal justice system does not convict people of first-degree murder based on conclusions reached by viewers watching cable television shows or from listening to true-crime podcasts. The Joan Bernal case, in recent years, was featured by both.
Bernal and his wife lived on Joliet’s east side and she vanished from her home in December 1988 and was never seen alive again. By the late 1990s, she was legally declared dead by the courts, according to Wednesday’s testimony…