MOUNT VERNON - St. Clair County Associate Judge Julie Katz correctly detained two suspects under the state’s bail reform law, the SAFE-T Act, according to Fifth District appellate judges.
In a stream of decisions from Dec. 13 to Dec. 21, the appellate court affirmed Katz and two other judges who granted exceptions to automatic release.
They reversed a judge who ordered release of a sexual assault suspect and a judge who ordered release of a suspect who shoved an officer and ran.
The appellate court's first ruling on Katz involved Kelly Mills, who allegedly committed aggravated possession of a stolen vehicle.
Officers apprehended him on Sept. 19 with a warrant setting bail at $100,000, and state’s attorney James Gomric moved for detention.
At a hearing on Sept. 21, the state produced a proffer showing Mills took a vehicle without permission and fled from officers 21 miles per hour over the limit.
Katz ordered detention, finding clear and convincing evidence that Mills posed a flight risk.
She found no condition or combination of conditions would mitigate a threat of willful flight and less restrictive conditions would not ensure community safety.
Mills argued on appeal that the state needed more evidence than it produced, but justices Mark Boie, Barry Vaughan and Michael McHaney found the proffer sufficient.
“The state argues that it is difficult to envision a scenario that would better demonstrate the defendant’s propensity and willingness to flee to avoid prosecution than by driving a stolen vehicle at a high rate of speed in an effort to elude law enforcement officers attempting to apprehend him,” Boie wrote.
“We agree with the State,” he added.
The appellate court found the law requires the state to tender to a defendant a criminal history, police reports, written and recorded statements, and the substance of oral statements.
“That is exactly what the state did in this case,” Boie wrote.
The second ruling on Katz involved Jared Kitterman, who allegedly committed residential burglary in O’Fallon on July 26.
Gomric charged him on Sept. 5, and Katz heard a detention motion on Sept. 28.
She said a Madison County judge placed Kitterman on felony probation on July 10.
She added that she considered the serious nature of the burglary charge combined with felony probation and found he posed a real and present danger to community safety.
Katz ordered detention, and Kitterman appealed.
Justices Randy Moore, John Barberis, and Boie found her decision was not against the manifest weight of the evidence.
They found evident proof and great presumption that Kitterman committed the alleged offense.
In a case from Champaign County, the Fifth District affirmed detention of Monet Johnson on charges of cocaine delivery, armed violence, and possession of a firearm by a felon.
At his hearing, the state proffered that it applied for a search warrant after a source reported purchasing crack from Johnson at least 50 times.
The state proffered that officers who arrived with the warrant discovered a revolver in his waistband and cocaine and cash in his pockets.
Associate Judge Brett Olmstead said Johnson’s history included six prison sentences.
He said Johnson knew he could not legally possess a firearm because he had been sentenced to prison for doing just that.
Olmstead ordered detention; and Johnson appealed, claiming the law’s exception for threats to community safety apply only to threats of physical violence.
Boie, Vaughan and McHaney ruled that requiring proof that a defendant will commit a violent offense would impose a material change in the plain language of the law.
In a Moultrie County case, Vaughan and Justice Thomas Welch affirmed detention of Joshua Presley on a misdemeanor charge of home invasion, and McHaney dissented.
At Presley’s hearing, Circuit Judge Jeremy Richey said, “I don’t think this case is even close.”
He said Presley was uncooperative with his arrest and tried to dig out of his jail cell.
He added that Presley asked his girlfriend to research locations that would not extradite.
Richey said Presley demonstrated by specific behavior that he was a threat to a specific person.
“For the protection of the victims in this case and for the public generally, the defendant will be detained,” he said.
Presley appealed, claiming the state didn’t file a timely petition and the law doesn’t allow detention for a misdemeanor.
Vaughan and Welch found an untimely petition may touch upon rights but doesn’t violate constitutional rights.
They found the law required a hearing, and it occurred.
They found Presley forfeited the misdemeanor issue by failing to object at the hearing.
Dissenter McHaney wrote that locking a defendant in a cell until the state overcomes his presumption of innocence affects his fundamental right to liberty.
“The issue here is whether that hearing should have been allowed to occur at all,” he wrote.
McHaney found it clear that legislators intended to consider detention as “not merely touching on a fundamental right but as enveloping a fundamental right.”
Reversed releases
In a Saline County case, Moore, Barberis and Boie reversed an order of Circuit Judge Jayson Clark denying detention of Jeffrey Williams.
The state charged Williams with possessing methamphetamine and paraphernalia.
The state also charged him with obstructing justice and resisting an officer, alleging that he shoved the arresting officer and ran.
The state produced a proffer at a hearing, but Clark said, “If you want to present evidence, call witnesses and put on evidence.”
He denied detention and state’s attorney Molly Wilson appealed.
Moore wrote that a circuit court cannot refuse to acknowledge or consider a proffer for the purposes of a petition to detain.
He directed Clark to make express findings as to whether any condition or combination of conditions allow release.
In a Fayette County case, Barberis, Moore and Boie reversed an order of Associate Judge Allan Loie denying detention of Robert Willenborg.
The state charged Willenborg with sexual assault and abuse of two minors who worked for him on his father’s dairy farm.
Lolie ordered electronic monitoring and home confinement with permission to work on the farm as long as he stayed 500 feet away from other workers.
State’s attorney Brenda Mathis appealed, claiming electronic monitoring wouldn’t protect minors on the farm.
Barberis wrote that electronic monitoring wouldn’t indicate proximity to minors and there was no way to ensure compliance with a 500 foot restriction.
He wrote that conditions of release would result in “exactly the same scenario under which the crimes with which Willenborg is charged occurred in the first place.”
“Essentially, the court placed the enforcement of the conditions in the hands of defendant and his employer,” Barberis wrote.