Background
Deveon Curry was charged with unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon, defacing a firearm’s identification marks, and possession of a controlled substance. The State alleged that Curry displayed a gun and made a threat during an argument at the home of a former dating partner. Police recovered a loaded handgun with a defaced serial number from beneath a mattress, and a custodial search allegedly yielded 14 baggies containing suspected crack cocaine.
On January 5, 2026, the circuit court granted the State’s petition for pretrial detention, finding that the proof was evident or the presumption great that Curry committed a detainable offense, that he posed a real and present safety threat, and that no release conditions could mitigate that threat. Curry later filed a pleading titled “Motion for Relief Under the Pretrial Fairness Act,” arguing that circumstances had changed because the alleged victim no longer felt threatened and wanted the no-contact order lifted. After the court continued his detention, Curry appealed and elected to rely on that pleading instead of filing an optional appellate memorandum.
The Court’s Holding
The appellate court dismissed the appeal because Curry did not satisfy Illinois Supreme Court Rule 604(h)(2). That rule makes a compliant motion for relief a prerequisite to appealing a pretrial-detention order. The motion must identify errors in the circuit court’s detention decision and state the grounds and relief sought, thereby giving the circuit court an opportunity to correct those errors and framing the issues for appellate review.
Looking to the substance rather than the caption of Curry’s pleading, the court concluded that it was a motion seeking pretrial release based on changed circumstances, not a Rule 604(h)(2) motion challenging errors in the January detention ruling. Because the pleading requested a redetermination and did not identify any error committed at the original detention hearing, it could not support the appeal. The court did not decide whether Curry’s continued detention was substantively justified.
The dismissal does not necessarily foreclose a later appeal. Rule 604(h) permits an appeal at any time before conviction and sets no deadline for filing a proper motion for relief, so Curry may file a compliant motion and pursue another appeal before conviction.
Key Takeaways
- A Rule 604(h)(2) motion identifying alleged circuit-court errors is a prerequisite to appellate review of an Illinois pretrial-detention order.
- A pleading seeking release because circumstances have changed does not preserve a challenge to errors in the original detention decision merely because it is captioned as a motion for relief.
- The dismissal was procedural and did not resolve the merits of Curry’s detention; a proper motion and later preconviction appeal remain available.
Why It Matters
The order underscores the distinction between asking a trial court to reconsider continued detention based on new circumstances and preserving alleged errors in an earlier detention ruling for appeal. Defense counsel must expressly identify the challenged errors and requested appellate relief in a Rule 604(h)(2) motion.
The decision is an unpublished Rule 23 order and is not precedential except in the limited circumstances permitted by Illinois Supreme Court Rule 23(e)(1).