ILLINOIS APPELLATE COURT UPHOLDS NO-STALKING LAW AS CONSTITUTIONAL - JUDGE REJECTS PEORIA POLICE OFFICER'S "NOT STALKING" APPEAL

ILLINOIS APPELLATE COURT UPHOLDS NO-STALKING LAW AS CONSTITUTIONAL - JUDGE REJECTS PEORIA POLICE OFFICER'S "NOT STALKING" APPEAL

By ANDY KRAVETZ (akravetz@pjstar.com) Journal Star Posted Aug 07, 2013

Judges reject Peoria police officer's no-stalking appeal

A trio of appellate court judges rejected an attempt by a Peoria police officer to have the state’s Stalking No Contact statute declared unconstitutional.

In a nine-page decision handed down Wednesday morning, the judges from the Third District Appellate Court ruled the provision, which is similar to an order of protection, passes constitutional muster and is not overly vague, as alleged by Officer Jeff Wilson, whose legal battles with another officer have put the statute front and center.

Wilson was barred from contact with fellow officer Donna Nicholson in 2011, after a judge found he stalked Nicholson by using department-owned equipment to track and photograph her. At the time, the judge allowed Wilson to continue as a police officer as long as he stayed away from Nicholson and did not carry a firearm when off duty.

His appeal, which was funded by City Hall, essentially tried to strike down the law.

But the judges found that his actions, by themselves, disagreed and said the law survives because it gives an “person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what conduct is lawful and what conduct is unlawful."

The facts of the case, the judges wrote, are clear enough to avoid any vagueness.

“Here, Wilson engaged in conduct which, from an objective standpoint, would cause a reasonable person to have some fear for his or her safety or cause that person emotional distress. Wilson placed a tracking device on Nicholson's car for the purpose of surreptitiously tracking her movement and trained a hidden video camera on her desk to secretly record her activities,” wrote Judge William Holdridge with Judges Mary McDade and Mary K. O’Brien concurring. “It cannot be seriously argued that such conduct would not cause fear and emotional distress for a reasonable person in Nicholson's position.”

Nicholson has since filed for an extension of the order, alleging Wilson has violated the provisions since its inception in 2011. This time, she’s seeking to have a judge bar him from having a firearm, which would cause him to lose his job as a police officer.

A hearing on that is set for late September.