People v. Waldsmith

── People v. Waldsmith ── Court: Appellate Court of Illinois Date: May 08, 2026 Category: General 2026 IL App (2d) 260052-U No. 2-26-0052 Order filed May 8, 2026 NOTICE: This order was filed under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 23(b) and is not precedential except in the limited circumstances allowed under Rule 23(e)(1). IN THE APPELLATE COURT OF ILLINOIS SECOND DISTRICT THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ROBERT S. WALDSMITH, Defendant-Appellant. Appeal from the Circuit Court of Kane County. Honorable William G. Engerman and Donald M. Tegeler, Jr., Judges, Presiding. No. 25-CF-1757 JUSTICE BIRKETT delivered the judgment of the court. Justices McLaren and Mullen concurred in the judgment. ORDER ¶1 Held: The trial court did not err in granting the State’s petition to deny defendant pretrial release and ordering defendant detained. ¶2 Defendant, Robert S. Waldsmith, appeals from orders of the circuit court of Kane County granting the State’s petition to deny him pretrial release pursuant to article 110 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1963 (Code) (725 ILCS 5/art. 110 (West 2024)), as amended by Public Acts 101-652, § 10-255, and 102-1104, § 70 (eff. Jan. 1, 2023), commonly known as the Pretrial Fairness Act. We affirm. ¶3 I. BACKGROUND ¶4 On July 27, 2025, defendant was charged by complaint with one count of attempt predatory criminal sexual assault of a child ((720 ILCS 5/8-4(a) (West 2024)); (720 ILCS 5/11-1.40(a)(1) (West 2024)), a class 1 felony; one count of indecent solicitation of a child (id. §11-6(a)), a class 1 felony; three counts of violating the Sex Offender Registration Act (SORA) (730 ILCS 150/10(a) (West 2024)) for his failure to register a change of address as a sex offender, class 2 felonies; three counts of sexual exploitation of a child (720 ILCS 5/11-9.1(a)(2) (West 2024)), class 4 felonies; three counts of being a child sex offender in a public park (id. §11-9.3(a-10), class 4 felonies; and four counts of distributing harmful material to a minor (id. § 11-21(b)(1)(A)), class A misdemeanors. ¶5 That same day, the State filed a verified petition to deny defendant pretrial release. It asserted that the proof was evident or the presumption great that defendant committed detainable offenses, including attempt predatory criminal sexual assault of a child, sexual exploitation of a child, and child sex offender in a public park, and that his pretrial release would pose a real and present threat to the safety of any person or the community. See 725 ILCS 5/110-6.1(a)(5) (West 2024). The State also outlined defendant’s criminal history, including several offenses for which he was sentenced to terms of imprisonment, including a 2001 conviction in Du Page County for predatory criminal sexual assault of a child (eight years in the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC)), a 2011 conviction in Cook County for violation of SORA (two years in IDOC), and a 2015 violation of SORA (four years in IDOC). The State also noted that defendant currently was on probation in connection with three offenses, including a failure to register felony and two domestic battery misdemeanors, with probation set to terminate August 13, 2026. -2- ¶6 At a hearing on the State’s petition, presided over by Judge William G. Engerman, the court admitted three exhibits into evidence: an Elgin police department report, a sworn police synopsis, and an investigative report prepared by the Kane County Child Advocacy Center (Advocacy Center). The police repo