People v. SalleyPeople v. Salley
Held: The circuit court correctly found that continued pretrial detention was necessary to avoid the safety risk that defendant‘s release would pose.
¶ 1 Defendant Willie Salley appeals the circuit court‘s orders continuing his pretrial detention and denying his motion for relief pursuant to article 110 of the
I. BACKGROUND
¶ 2 Salley was charged with aggravated unlawful use of a weapon by a felon (AUUWF) (
¶ 3 On May 5, 2024, the State filed a verified petition to deny Salley pretrial release. The State
¶ 4 At the hearing, the State proffered evidence of the charged offenses and Salley‘s criminal history. On May 3, 2024, at approximately 5:52 p.m., civilian security guards employed by the University of Chicago were monitoring protests occurring in the university‘s quad. The security guards flagged down police officers regarding a person suspected of carrying a firearm. The guards told officers that Salley came to confront one of security guards about a personal issue. One of the guards told the officers she saw Salley grab a gun from his car and approach the other security guard.
¶ 5 Salley was arrested, searched, and then taken to the police station. The officers did not find a gun on his person. One of the security guards told officers that Salley put the firearm in his vehicle prior to being detained. Subsequently, officers found a vehicle registered to Salley parked nearby. In the vehicle, officers found a purple drawstring bag on the front passenger seat, which contained a gold Glock 19X nine-millimeter handgun. The gun had a round in the chamber and 16 more rounds in the magazine. It was equipped with a laser attachment, and officers found an extended magazine containing 25 additional nine-millimeter rounds in the trunk.
¶ 6 Salley was previously convicted of aggravated discharge of a firearm and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Salley also had two additional misdemeanor convictions. Salley‘s public safety assessment report rated him as a three out of six on the new-criminal-activity scale and a two out of six on the failure-to-appear scale. The report recommended release with pretrial monitoring.
¶ 7 The State asserted that Salley posed a real and present safety threat to the community where he brought a firearm to a dispute with the university security guard and that no condition or combination of conditions would mitigate his risk to the community as “he‘s already a registered gun offender and here he is at the campus of the University of Chicago confronting someone with a loaded handgun.”
¶ 8 Defense counsel argued that the information contained in the police report did not support the
¶ 9 In rebuttal, in response to the court asking for the underlying facts of Salley‘s prior conviction, the State tendered the police report to the court and defense counsel. The prosecutor paraphrased the report, which disclosed as follows:
“[O]n August 25, 2019, a physical altercation occurred in the Parkway Gardens apartment complex. After a fight was over, shots were fired back and forth between two separate groups. The arrestee of this arrest report, who is the defendant present before the Court, had been identified as the individual who was with the victim‘s group that fired a handgun toward the opposing group, which included an individual by the name of Cashell Williams ***. Williams had fired toward Marshall‘s group. Marshall had been shot in the chest and killed. The defendant, who is present before the Court, had admitted to being on the scene, had a handgun and fired three times.”
¶ 10 The circuit court ordered Salley detained. It found that the proof was evident and the presumption was great that Salley committed a detainable offense; that Salley posed a threat to the community‘s safety based on the fact he is a registered gun offender not allowed to possess a weapon and “[n]ot only [was] he alleged to have possessed a weapon, but retrieved that weapon, because he was in a dispute with a security guard” with a large group of people in the vicinity; and that no condition or combination of conditions could mitigate that threat as Salley had demonstrated “the ability to obtain a weapon [was] clearly not something beyond his skill set.”
¶ 11 The State filed a superseding information on June 13, 2024, charging Salley with two counts of unlawful use of a weapon by a felon (
¶ 12 On June 28, 2024, Salley filed a motion for pretrial release. A hearing was held on the motion
¶ 13 Based on these facts, defense counsel argued that Salley never had a gun and never threatened anybody with a gun, that the security guard lied to the officer about seeing him with one, and that Salley did not pose a threat to anybody. Noting that the pretrial service report had recommended releasing Salley with conditions, counsel urged the court to release him and place him on house arrest or electronic monitoring.
¶ 14 The State recounted the facts of its previous proffer. It argued the proof was evident and the presumption was great that Salley committed the offense, that Salley posed a clear and present threat to the public as he was armed with a firearm, which he was prohibited from possessing, with an extended magazine “in public, in a crowd of people in the middle of the day at approximately 6:00 p.m.,” and there were no condition or combination of conditions that could mitigate Salley‘s risk.
¶ 15 The circuit court denied Salley‘s motion for pretrial release and ordered continued detention. The court found that Salley was charged with a detainable offense and there was an eyewitness, whose credibility could be determined at trial. Further, the court found that continued detention was necessary. The court stated that Salley was a threat to the safety of society as he possessed a weapon, which he was prohibited from having, during a dispute with the security guard and “was willing to use that gun either by show or by use to settle a dispute in broad daylight in a medical
¶ 16 On July 16, 2024, Salley filed a motion for relief under
II. ANALYSIS
¶ 17 On appeal, Salley argues the circuit court erred by continuing his pretrial detention because defense counsel presented new evidence showing Salley did not pose a safety threat, as initially determined by the court, and that any threat he presented could be mitigated with conditions.
¶ 18 When a defendant has been denied pretrial release, at each subsequent court appearance, the circuit court “must find that continued detention is necessary to avoid a real and present threat to the safety of any person or persons or the community, based on the specific articulable facts of the case, or to prevent the defendant‘s willful flight from prosecution.”
¶ 19 Under the recent Supreme Court decision in People v. Morgan, 2025 IL 130626, “when the parties to a pretrial detention hearing proceed solely by proffer, the reviewing court is not bound by the circuit court‘s factual findings and may therefore conduct its own independent de novo review of the proffered evidence and evidence otherwise documentary in nature.” People v. Morgan, 2025 IL 130626, ¶ 54. While
¶ 20 The new information proffered by Salley at the July 16, 2024 hearing provided additional context for the charged incident, but it did not alter the circuit court‘s determination that his detention was necessary to prevent a threat to the community. See
III. CONCLUSION
¶ 21 Based on the foregoing reasons, we affirm the circuit court‘s orders continuing Salley‘s pretrial detention and denying his motion for relief.
¶ 22 Affirmed.