Huntley store clerk who texted private customer photos to himself: State Supreme Court upholds lesser charge

The Illinois Supreme Court has upheld a lower court’s ruling that reduced a conviction from a felony to a misdemeanor of a St. Charles man convicted of secretly texting himself sexual images of a woman from her cellphone while he was working at a Huntley cellular business.

In 2021, Justin Devine, 29, of St. Charles was convicted in Kane County of nonconsensual dissemination of private images, a Class 4 felony. He was sentenced to 18 months of probation and 180 days in the county jail.

But Devine appealed, and the Illinois Second District Court of Appeals reduced the conviction to disorderly conduct, a Class C misdemeanor.

This conviction carries a much lower sentence of supervision and, for a defendant who follows all the rules, can potentially be expunged, whereas a felony conviction can forever remain on a person’s record.

The state took the appellate court’s decision to the Illinois Supreme Court, which upheld the appellate court’s ruling, with five of seven justices agreeing, according to the ruling issued Friday.

Though the appellate court’s decision was upheld by the higher court, in its decision, state supreme court justices disagreed with the appellate court’s ruling that Devine is not guilty of dissemination because he only sent the images to himself.

In the higher court’s ruling, justices wrote: “Although we disagree with the appellate court’s conclusion that defendant did not disseminate the images when he texted them from [the woman’s] phone to his own, we agree with the appellate court’s conclusion that [the woman] was not identifiable from the images.”

However, the higher court did agree with the appellate court that the woman is not identifiable in the images that he sent to himself, therefore Devine is not guilty of the more serious felony, the higher court ruled.

The woman had gone to the Verizon store in Huntley on Sept. 19, 2018, because she needed her number transferred from Sprint to Verizon, according to the ruling. She later accused Devine, who was working there and whom she did not know, of clandestinely accessing five private sexual images from her cellphone and texting them to himself while working with her phone.

The woman told police that Devine had her phone for about two minutes and the woman said she “could see him moving his fingers over the phone, but she could not see the phone’s screen,” the ruling said.

When she opened up her text messages, she saw an outgoing message to a number she did not recognize. She wrote down the number and told police “she kind of freaked out” when she saw the message was sending her private photos. She tried but could not stop the message from sending, the ruling said.

Later she was able to connect the number she wrote down with Devine’s phone and using social media she realized it was Devine who sent himself her pictures, the ruling said.

During questioning with Huntley police, Devine initially denied sending himself the photos, according to the court records. But then he admitted he went “into the ‘recent photos’ on [her] phone and sent five pictures to his own phone number,” according to the ruling.

John Kopp, a Kane County-based criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor in Cook County, said the significance of Devine’s conviction being reduced to a misdemeanor “can not be overstated.”

Conviction on a Class 4 felony “can be very damaging for someone moving forward with their lives,” said Kopp, who has no connection to Devine’s case.

The felony conviction can result in a loss of rights including gun ownership, voting or obtaining employment, a mortgage, credit line or the ability to rent a home, he said.

A Class C misdemeanor is the lowest level of a charge typically issued for offenses of behaving in a way that is alarming or disturbing. If a person complies with the sentence of supervision, they can have the charge expunged from their record, Kopp said.

The charges carry “two vastly different consequences for somebody,” Kopp said.

Devine’s attorney declined to comment.