Lax Illinois Sentencing Laws Allowed Convicted Kitten Killer to Walk Free After Just One Day in Prison

Animal rights advocates are calling for legislative action after gaps in Illinois sentencing law allowed a convicted kitten killer to be released from prison after serving less than one day of his four-and-a-half year sentence.

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Thomas Martel, 25, pleaded guilty last month to animal torture and aggravated cruelty to animals, three years after his then-girlfriend advised police he had tortured and killed multiple kittens inside his Chicago apartment in 2023.

Martel was charged in connection with killing four cats over a three-week period in June 2023, though his girlfriend suggested there were other feline victims.

Martel’s girlfriend was first made aware of his sick behavior when she received a video from an acquaintance showing Martel throwing a pillowcase into Lake Michigan that apparently contained Martel’s kitten, Shelly. He was not charged in that kitten’s alleged death.

Martel continued purchasing look-alike tabby kittens on Craigslist and naming them each “Shelly.”

Prosecutors said Martel drowned and squeezed two kittens to death in his apartment.

After he killed those two kittens, he asked his girlfriend for money to buy another cat, and the pair picked up another kitten, who he also named Shelly.

Ten days later, the girlfriend found graphic photos and videos of the kitten on Martel’s phone, including one video of the kitten that was captioned, “just before I murdered her.” A second video showed Martel decapitating the kitten, according to prosecutors.

The girlfriend sent the information to Chicago police and stayed away from the apartment for several days. When she later returned, Martel told her he had killed three cats in a microwave and stored their remains in a pantry, according to prosecutors. The girlfriend again contacted police, who cut open a black bag and discovered what appeared to be the remains of multiple kittens.

Martel was charged with two felony counts of animal torture and four felony counts of aggravated cruelty to animals.

He ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of animal torture and one count of aggravated cruelty to animals. Last month, Cook County Judge Sharon Kanter chose to honor a 2025 plea deal that would see Martel serve two concurrent 54-month sentences, though prosecutors had since withdrawn the offer.

At the time of his sentencing, Martel had served more than 1,000 days on house arrest. He received credit for the time spent on electronic monitoring, at the judge’s direction, and was eligible for Illinois’s standard 50 percent sentence reduction, allowing him to be booked into prison and released on the same day. He is now serving six months of mandatory supervised release.

He was also placed on the Cook County animal abuser list, is prohibited from owning or having contact with animals, and will be required to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

Martel, who admitted to his girlfriend that he had been killing cats since he was 8 years old, did not appear remorseful during his previous court appearances, with animal rights advocates saying he smiled at them after he and his attorney were able to continue delaying the case time and time again, according to CWB Chicago.

Joe Tabor, the senior director of legal research at the Illinois Policy Institute, tells National Review, “Illinois has gaps in their legal system, and the case of the Kitten Killer represents one of them.”

“Currently there is no protection to ensure offenders such as Thomas Martel are required to serve their full sentences,” Tabor said. “This often leaves sentencing decisions and time served up to judges’ discretion, which can vary and be inconsistent. Illinois needs a tougher ‘Truth in Sentencing’ law to require serious, repeat and violent convicts to serve their full term, as could be laid out in law.”

Illinois’s current truth-in-sentencing law was passed in 1998 as part of an effort to crack down on crime, and was actually stricter than the laws that preceded it. Previously, prisoners in Illinois could earn time off their sentence through good behavior or participation in prison programming. The credits could reduce a person’s sentence by up to half, no matter the crime they had committed.

However, the 1998 sentencing law created a tiered system in which offenders are required to serve either 50 percent, 60 percent, 75 percent, 85 percent, or 100 percent of their sentences, depending on the severity of their crime.

The strictest “truth in sentencing” tier is reserved for convictions of first-degree murder, which requires convicts to serve out their entire sentence. The 85 percent tier applies to “serious and violent offenses,” including aggravated kidnapping, aggravated arson, aggravated battery with a firearm, and sexual assault.

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Prisoners serving time for some Class X felonies, including high-level drug deliveries and gunrunning, are required to serve 60 to 75 percent of their sentence.

All other crimes are not subject to the truth-in-sentencing guidelines; convicts in those cases are eligible to earn up to one day of good conduct credit for each day served, reducing their total time in custody up to 50 percent if they maintain good behavior.

That Martel’s brutal crimes against cats — which studies show can be a precursor to violence toward humans — fell into the 50 percent tier has enraged animal rights advocates. The U.S. Department of Justice warns that “Intentional Animal Torture and Cruelty is the gateway to acts of extreme, remorseless violence, and must be as vigorously addressed as any other crime.”

Two rescue groups, SAYv Animal Organization and Garrido Stray Rescue Foundation, have formed a coalition to advocate for the passage of “Shelly’s Law.” Named after the murdered kittens, the law would ensure prison sentences imposed for felony animal torture are served as intended, and would also strengthen the recognition of multiple animal victims, because Martel’s plea agreement resulted in a conviction focused on the torture of a single animal.

Democratic leaders in the Illinois state house and senate did not respond to requests for comment from National Review about whether legislators planned to take up the law.

House Minority Leader Tony McCombie told National Review, “Those who commit heinous crimes, including horrific acts of animal cruelty, should face real consequences.”

“We’ve seen how gaps in Illinois law, including policies enacted under the SAFE-T Act, have allowed offenders to cycle through electronic monitoring instead of being fully held accountable. That undermines public confidence in our criminal justice system and raises serious concerns about public safety. Change is necessary, and I look forward to reviewing and supporting legislation that closes these loopholes, strengthens accountability, and restores confidence in our justice system.”

In the meantime, local residents in Martel’s Wicker Park neighborhood are taking matters into their own hands and posting flyers in the area warning pet owners that he has been released. Social media users have launched a campaign urging Chicagoans to call the chief judge’s executive committee in Cook County to submit complaints about Judge Kanter, who is up for reappointment in June 2027.

The Garrido Stray Rescue Foundation has also expressed disappointment with the judge.

“Kanter chose to give Martel a way out instead of giving the victims their day in court,” the group said in a statement on Facebook after the judge accepted the plea deal on the day jury selection was set to begin in the case last month.

“For nearly three years, advocates sat through delays, continuances, and postponed trial dates while Martel remained at home. Today, those delays mattered,” the foundation said. “Today was not the outcome we fought for. Today was not the accountability we hoped for.”

However, Mark Glennon, the founder of Wirepoints, an independent nonprofit website that publishes research and commentary about Illinois policy, told NR he is “not prepared to blame the judge for wrongful exercise of her discretion based on the facts that we have.”

“To me, this is yet another indictment of the broad failure of Illinois law to provide sensible, comprehensible, transparent rules about who gets locked up, for how long and for what,” he said.

“As best as I can tell the judge had applied at least the spirit of the statutory framework that we have here in Illinois, convoluted as it is, which piles up different guidelines and rules for sentencing,” Glennon added.

Frustration among the general public over the case is compounded by the fact that residents have seen similar cases, outside of animal cruelty, where criminals are given pretrial release thanks to the state’s 2023 SAFE-T act, only to reoffend. The act made Illinois the first state in the nation to completely eliminate cash bail in favor of a system that asks judges to evaluate an accused person’s threat to the public and flight risk, rather than their ability to pay. The act leans into an accused person’s presumption of innocence to encourage pre-trial release.

However, over a four-year period beginning in 2020, 387 people awaiting trial for felonies in Chicago and on pre-trial release were arrested for murder or attempted murder, according to data from CWB.

“There are many factors in Illinois that make this extremely frustrating for the public and it’s no surprise that they get as angry as they do when the consequences are as horrid as we saw here,” Glennon said of the Martel case.

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