People v. Wilson

2025 IL App (1st) 242096-U

• Court: Appellate Court of Illinois
• Decided: January 28, 2025
• Docket: 1-24-2096
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

2025 IL App (1st) 242096-U

SECOND DIVISION January 28, 2025

No. 1-24-2096B

NOTICE: This order was filed under Supreme Court Rule 23 and is not precedent except in the limited circumstances allowed under Rule 23(e)(1). ______________________________________________________________________________

IN THE APPELLATE COURT OF ILLINOIS FIRST JUDICIAL DISTRICT ______________________________________________________________________________

PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, ) Appeal from the ) Circuit Court of Plaintiff-Appellee, ) Cook County ) v. ) 24 CR 0684701 ) GREGORY WILSON, ) Honorable ) Shauna Boliker, Defendant-Appellant. ) Judge Presiding _____________________________________________________________________________

JUSTICE ELLIS delivered the judgment of the court. Presiding Justice Van Tine and Justice Howse concurred in the judgment.

ORDER

¶1 Held: Affirmed. State did not commit misconduct in proffer at detention hearing. State met its burden to detain defendant before trial.

¶2 Defendant Gregory Wilson stands charged, among other things, with vehicular hijacking

in connection with the carjacking of a woman at a gas station in south Chicago last April. The

State filed a verified petition to detain Wilson before trial. After a hearing, the court granted the

petition and remanded Wilson to the Cook County Jail. He appeals, alleging the State committed

prosecutorial misconduct and failed to meet its burden to detain him. We affirm.

¶3 We take the facts from the parties’ proffers at the initial detention hearing and at the

hearing on Wilson’s subsequent motion for relief. The crimes with which Wilson is charged No. 1-24-2096B

occurred on April 17, 2024. Shortly after 9:30 a.m., the alleged carjacking victim (her name was

never given) pulled into an Amoco gas station on the south side of Chicago to refill her 2020

Nissan SUV. As she got out of the car, a man (later identified as Wilson) approached her from

behind while mumbling to himself. He was wearing a dark jacket, blue jeans, and blue Croc

shoes with a Bears logo.

¶4 Wilson approached the complainant and asked her for a ride. When she refused,

defendant lunged at her and tried to grab her debit card from her hand. Though she evaded him at

first, Wilson then reached into the breast area of his jacket, which bulged, and verbally

threatened the alleged victim.

¶5 Wilson then forcibly took the keys from the complainant’s hands, got into the Nissan, and

drove off. The complainant called the police. On the day of the incident, police showed her a

photo array that included Wilson, but she identified someone other than Wilson as the carjacker.

¶6 During the investigation, police recovered surveillance camera footage from the gas

station. The video showed that, on the morning of April 17, a black Jeep pulled into the Amoco

gas station and parked. A man wearing a dark jacket, blue jeans, and blue Croc shoes with a

Bears logo (allegedly Wilson) got out of the Jeep and went into the convenience store. A woman

in the car, referred to only as “Witness Z” in the proffer, was seated in the front passenger seat.

While the man was inside the store, Witness Z can be seen on the footage climbing over into the

driver’s seat. Witness Z then drove off, with the man running from the store and briefly chasing

after her on foot. Police later determined that Witness Z was the registered owner of the Jeep.

¶7 Officers later pulled over the Jeep and questioned Witness Z about what happened at the

gas station. She told them that Wilson was her boyfriend. The police detained her. She then gave

the officers her cell phone and showed them text messages that Wilson had purportedly sent her.

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In those photos, defendant can be seen sitting in the driver’s seat of the complainant’s Nissan as

he was driving on the highway.

¶8 Witness Z gave Wilson’s cell phone number to the officers, who obtained a search

warrant for both his and Witness Z’s mobile phones. That investigation uncovered that the

phones were together at the same time and place just before the vehicular hijacking. Additional

cell phone data showed that the phones were separated when Wilson sent Witness Z photos of

himself driving the Nissan. Later, Witness Z identified Wilson as the man in the surveillance

video. Police later showed Witness Z’s mother, identified only as “Witness P,” still photos of the

gas station surveillance video. Witness P identified the man in the photos as Wilson.

¶9 Police arrested Wilson on June 19, 2024. He gave a statement to investigators. He said he

went to the gas station with Witness Z, his fiancée, driving a Jeep that Wilson said he owned.

While he was in the store, someone he did not know stole the Jeep from the gas station. He

chased after the Jeep, but it got away. So Wilson then went back to the gas station, approached

another woman, took her Nissan and drove it away, later abandoning it.

¶ 10 In aggravation, the State noted that Wilson had a 2019 felony conviction for aggravated

unlawful use of a weapon, for which he received two years’ probation terminated

unsatisfactorily. His criminal history also included a 2019 conviction for battery, a 2020

conviction for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, convictions in 2020 for criminal damage

to property and assault, and a 2024 conviction in Indiana for resisting arrest, for which he was

currently on probation.

¶ 11 Wilson highlighted that, while he did give a statement to police, there were questions

about whether interviewing officers violated Wilson’s Miranda rights. He also claimed that the

State did not meet its burden of showing by clear and convincing evidence that he had committed

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the crime, that he was a clear and present threat to the community, or that any condition or set of

conditions would negate that threat and allow him to be released. Wilson noted that he was a

lifelong resident of Cook County, lived with his grandmother, and took care of her and his two

children by working in construction.

¶ 12 The court sought the input of the pretrial services officer, who provided this assessment:

“Yes to the violence flag. New criminal activity four, failure to appear two. The score coincides

with level 3.”

¶ 13 The court denied Wilson pretrial release. The court stressed that the incident was

captured on camera, that Witnesses Z and P each identified Wilson as the man in the video

stealing the car, and that Wilson confessed. The court also noted that this was not the first time

Wilson had violated the terms of probation.

¶ 14 Wilson filed a motion for relief, asking the court to reconsider its decision. He argued

that prosecutors misrepresented the evidence against him. For one, the State had proffered that

the complainant identified defendant as the perpetrator when, in fact, the complainant identified

someone other than Wilson in the photo array. Second, he argued, the State’s proffer had made it

seem as if Wilson, in his statement, could be directly quoted as saying he ”approached another

woman at the gas station where he took her Nissan from her,” when in fact that was not a quote.

Wilson likewise claimed more generally that the State failed to meet its burden of proof.

¶ 15 The court denied the motion. Wilson appeals. He has not filed an additional

memorandum, electing to stand on the arguments in his motion for relief. The State has filed its

own memorandum in opposition.

¶ 16 Under the new pretrial-release provisions in state law, defendants are presumed eligible

for pretrial release. 725 ILCS 5/110-2(a), 110-6.1(e) (West 2022). The State may detain an

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accused if it establishes that the charged offense is eligible for detention and then proves, by

clear and convincing evidence, that (1) the proof is evident or the presumption great that the

defendant committed an offense which qualifies them for pretrial detention; (2) the defendant

poses 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; and (3) no condition or combination of conditions can

mitigate that real and present threat. Id. § 110-6.1(e).

¶ 17 Though the appellate courts have split on the standard of review of detention orders, and

our supreme court has not yet settled that split (see People v. Morgan, 2024 IL App (4th)

240103, pet. for leave to appeal granted, No. 130626 (June 11, 2024)), we need not resolve that

issue here; our conclusion would be the same under any standard of review. See People v. Vance,

2024 IL App (1st) 232503, ¶ 20.

¶ 18 We start with whether the State met its burden to detain Wilson. We agree with the trial

court that the State presented clear and convincing evidence that the proof is evident or the

presumption great that Wilson committed the crimes charged. Surveillance video captured a man

whom two people identified as Wilson at the convenience store. He is seen confronting the

complainant, and forcibly taking her keys, and driving off in her Nissan. Police later recovered

photographs of Wilson in the car, which he texted to his girlfriend. And lastly, Wilson confessed

to police that he took the Nissan after his girlfriend left him at the convenience store.

¶ 19 Wilson argues that his confession is inadmissible because police violated his Miranda

rights. See Miranda v. Arizona, 283 U.S. 436 (1966). He may one day prevail on that argument,

but at a detention hearing, a defendant may not move to suppress evidence or a confession;

rather, evidence that may have been the byproduct of an improper interrogation is relevant in

assessing the weight of the evidence against the defendant. 725 ILCS 5/110-6.1(f)(6) (West

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2022). Even setting aside Wilson’s statement to police for the sake of argument, the remaining

evidence was more than sufficient to meet the State’s burden on the first element.

¶ 20 Regarding the State’s proof that Wilson posed a real and present threat to the safety of

any person or persons or the community, Wilson argues that the State offered no specific proof

but rather made general assertions about the violent nature of robberies and carjackings in

general.

¶ 21 The evidence established that, upon being abandoned at a gas station in a crowded part of

Chicago, Wilson chose to steal the complainant’s car after she refused to give him a ride,

threatening her with violence by suggesting he had a weapon in his jacket, then forcibly took the

complainant’s keys and drove off in her car. Beyond the allegations in the case, Wilson’s

criminal history included firearm and violent convictions. And pretrial services “flagged” Wilson

for violence. We find the evidence sufficient on this factor.

¶ 22 We also uphold the finding that no condition or combination of conditions could mitigate

that threat. The court noted that Wilson was already on a form of monitoring—probation for his

misdemeanor resisting charge in Indiana—at the time he allegedly committed this crime. Failing

to comply with probation “does not lend any support for allowing less restrictive conditions.”

People v. Lee, 2024 IL App (1st) 232137, ¶ 33. And this was the second time, not the first, that

he violated the terms of probation. The court was rightly concerned that Wilson might disregard

the terms of any restrictions placed on him pending trial.

¶ 23 Wilson also claims that the State committed prosecutorial misconduct when it

misrepresented key facts during its proffer at its detention hearing, leading to a miscarriage of

justice on par with an intentional misrepresentation in a grand jury proceeding warranting

dismissal of an indictment. See People v. Basile, 2024 IL 129026, ¶ 32. The principal

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misrepresentation was the State’s assertion that the complainant identified Wilson as the

perpetrator, when in fact she picked out someone other than Wilson in the photo array. The State

also purportedly attributed quotes to Wilson during his statement to the police.

¶ 24 The State responds that its proffer was a summary of Wilson’s confession and not a direct

quote. And though the complainant did not identify Wilson, she did identify him by clothing, and

a man wearing that clothing was identified on the video by other witnesses as Wilson.

¶ 25 We find no basis for pretrial release as some kind of sanction against the State. First,

unlike dismissal of indictments based on the government’s misrepresentation (see 725 ILCS

5/114-1(a) (West 2022)), Wilson has cited no statutory basis for the automatic pretrial release of

a detainee as a sanction for a similar violation. That is likely because detainees are granted

unlimited opportunities to secure pretrial release while they await trial. See 725 ILCS 5/110-

6.1(i-5) (West 2024). Wilson was (and still is) free to point out that the evidence proffered at the

initial detention hearing was inaccurate or incomplete based on new discovery, proffer new and

updated evidence, and argue that the new facts or circumstances merit his release. See People v.

Walton, 2024 IL App (4th) 240541, ¶ 28 (defendant may present new information or change in

circumstance for relief under section 110-6.1(i-5)). Wilson could correct any of the State’s

“misrepresentations” at a later hearing, as he essentially did here with his Motion for Relief.

¶ 26 Second, to justify a sanction akin to dismissal of an indictment, at a minimum a

defendant must show “actual and substantial prejudice.” Basile, 2024 IL 129026, ¶ 32. Here,

even if the State incorrectly stated that complainant identified Wilson, there was ample

independent evidence of Wilson’s guilt. Two other witnesses identified Wilson on the

surveillance tape; Wilson sent photos of himself inside the carjacked vehicle; and Wilson

confessed to the crime. The misrepresentation was hardly prejudicial under these circumstances.

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¶ 27 And for what it’s worth, Wilson does not even allege that any misstatement by the State

was an intentional act. Indeed, he conceded at the hearing on his motion for relief that he was not

claiming that this misrepresentation was “purposeful, intentional, bad faith, anything like that,”

agreeing that the misrepresentation was merely “inadvertent.”

¶ 28 Simply put, we find nothing here coming close to a miscarriage of justice or misconduct

sufficient to warrant a sanction against the State.

¶ 29 In sum, the State met its burden of denying defendant pretrial release. And we find no

basis for a finding of prosecutorial misconduct. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

¶ 30 Affirmed.

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