2024 IL App (1st) 240725-U 

No. 1-24-0725B 

Order filed June 25, 2024

Second Division

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

Plaintiff-Appellee, ) Circuit Court of

 ) Cook County 

 ) 

 v. ) No. 23 CR 0374601 

) 

DELLTON CHATTMAN, ) Honorable 

) Jennifer Frances Coleman,

Defendant-Appellant. ) Judge Presiding

) 

_____________________________________________________________________________ 

JUSTICE ELLIS delivered the judgment of the court. 

Justices McBride and Cobbs concurred in the judgement.

ORDER

¶ 1 Held: Affirmed. State proved by clear and convincing evidence all elements necessary for 

denial of pretrial release. 

¶ 2 Defendant Dellton Chattman was detained in March 2023 on charges of first-degree 

murder and home invasion. After the passage of the law eliminating cash bond and allowing 

previously-detained inmates to seek pretrial release again, known as the Pretrial Fairness Act or 

“PFA,” defendant sought a new hearing, and the State petitioned for his continued detention. The 
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trial court ordered him to remain in pretrial detention. Defendant now appeals that ruling. We 

find no error and affirm.

¶ 3 Defendant is charged with the first-degree murder of “Victim,” during a home invasion at 

the residence of “Witness 1.” (The names of the victims and witnesses were not disclosed at the 

detention hearing.) Defendant has been in custody since his arrest on March 3, 2023. He filed a 

petition for pretrial release on March 11, 2024. The State filed a petition to deny release on 

March 21, 2024. A bond hearing was held that same day. The State proffered the following 

information. 

¶ 4 Victim was murdered on February 10, 2023, around 10:23 in the morning. At the time, he 

was in the bedroom in Witness 1’s apartment on the ground floor of a building on South Colfax 

Avenue in Chicago, between 74th and 75th Streets. 

¶ 5 Defendant and Witness 1 knew each other for about ten years, having met in a shelter 

they used to reside in. They were in a romantic relationship for a time, but that ended about two 

years before the shooting. Witness 1 then starting dating Victim. They were still dating at the 

time of the shooting.

¶ 6 About two months earlier, in December 2022, defendant and Witness 1 reconnected 

through the Snapchat app. They met at Witness 1’s apartment, without Victim, about two weeks 

before the shooting. Witness 1 recalled that defendant drove a small black car. A few days before 

the shooting, Witness 1 blocked defendant on Snapchat. The day before the shooting, defendant 

sent Witness 1 a request to unblock him. Victim saw that request on Witness 1’s phone, and a 

verbal argument of some sort followed. 

¶ 7 The State initially proffered that Victim called defendant on Witness 1’s phone, and an 

argument ensued in which defendant threatened Victim. But when the judge sought clarification 
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of the details, the State said that there was no argument between defendant and Victim, but rather 

an argument between Victim and Witness 1. 

¶ 8 In any event, Witness 1 left to work the night shift and came home the next morning. The 

State and the defense, relying on the incomplete discovery available at the time of the hearing, 

proffered slightly different versions of the events that immediately followed. According to the 

State, Witness 1 heard a knock on the rear door shortly after she came home and figured it was 

her roommate. When she opened the door, she saw defendant, dressed in all black, standing in 

front of her. He forced his way past her and into the building. On the defense version, as Witness 

1 was coming inside, a man dressed in all black forced his way into the building, coming up from 

behind Witness 1, who therefore never saw him head-on. 

¶ 9 Either way, the proffer established this much. The intruder was dressed in all black, from 

head to toe, including a black ski (or other face) mask and skull cap. The man demanded to know 

where Victim was, thus allowing Witness 1 to hear his voice. And Witness 1 positively identified

defendant as the intruder.

¶ 10 Witness 1 tried to block defendant and succeeded, at first, in pushing him back out of the 

apartment. But defendant then pulled out a handgun, fired a shot, and continued on his way. He

proceeded directly to Witness 1’s bedroom, apparently knowing where it was, where he found

Victim. After trying to force the bedroom door open, defendant reached his arm around the 

partially open door, fired several shots into the room, and quickly fled the scene. Police 

recovered four shell casings from the bedroom. Victim died of multiple gunshot wounds.

¶ 11 Witness 2 lived in an apartment building across the gangway from Witness 1. She heard 

gunshots coming from Witness 1’s building, somewhere toward the back. A slim, dark skinned 
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man, with a complexion like her own, and dressed in all black, ran through the gangway and 

turned left on Colfax.

¶ 12 A video from a nearby building, about half a block north on Colfax, shows a black Nissan 

parking on the street. Someone exits from the passenger side and runs back to the car about two 

minutes later. The car heads northbound on Colfax, and then westbound on 74th Street.

¶ 13 A black, four-door Nissan with Illinois plates is registered in defendant’s name. At 10:16 

a.m., just a few minutes before the shooting, POD cameras and plate readers recorded a black 

Nissan turning from East 75th Street onto Colfax Avenue, heading southbound. The first five 

digits of the license plate were captured by the plate reader. They matched the first five digits on 

defendant’s black Nissan.

¶ 14 Defendant’s car was found at or near the home of one of his sisters on the far south side. 

Cell-site data for defendant’s phone appeared to show the phone tracing a path from Victim’s 

building to defendant’s sister’s house at the relevant time. A few days later, defendant’s phone 

pinged a tower in Gary, Indiana, near the home of his other sister.

¶ 15 On the day of the shooting, Witness 1 “snapped” defendant a message on Snapchat that 

read, “you shot me.”

¶ 16 A security camera showed defendant’s car at a McDonald’s drive-through about an hour 

before the murder. Witness 1 viewed a still photo and said that the person visible in the car was 

not defendant. There was no indication whether that person was the driver or whether anyone 

else was in the car.

¶ 17 In mitigation, defendant noted that he turned himself in, without incident, after he learned 

there was a warrant for his arrest. He had no criminal record of any kind, was steadily employed 

at the YMCA, and was his daughter’s primary caretaker. Twenty-five letters submitted to the 
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court attested to defendant’s character, his kind ways, and the exceptional level of responsibility 

he was known to assume for his family members and others in his community.

¶ 18 Defendant challenged the State’s proof of all three findings that are required for pretrial 

detention. First, he argued that the proof was not evident that he committed the murder or home 

invasion. It was unclear how Witness 1 could have identified him, when the intruder was clad in 

black, from head to toe, and came up behind her, so that she never saw the intruder face to face.

The surveillance evidence, from various sources, may have put his car at the scene of the 

shooting, but it did not put him there, since there was no dispute that someone else was using his 

car shortly before the shooting. And the cell-site data may have put him near the scene, but it 

was too early to be any more precise than that. 

¶ 19 As for dangerousness, defendant emphasized that Witness 1 made several attempts to 

contact him in custody, according to her own family, thus indicating that she perceived no threat 

to her safety. And he argued that home confinement, with electronic monitoring, was sufficient 

to mitigate any perceived dangerousness and ensure his appearance in court. Defendant reiterates 

these same arguments on appeal.

¶ 20 The trial court ordered defendant to remain in custody. The court found, without further 

elaboration, clear and convincing evidence that the proof is evident or the presumption great that 

defendant committed first-degree murder. In the trial court’s view, defendant posed a threat to 

Witness 1, because she was both a surviving eyewitness and possibly an intended victim of the 

shooting. And the court found that no set of release conditions would suffice, for a combination 

of three related reasons. Defendant “planned” this shooting. Defendant committed it out of 

“anger” toward his ex-girlfriend and her romantic interest. And this was “a largely domestic 
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case,” which meant that confining defendant to a particular home would not necessarily prevent 

him from causing harm in another “domestic situation.”

¶ 21 Defendant filed a notice of appeal in the trial court on March 25, 2024, and in this court 

on April 3, 2024. This appeal was thus initiated before the recent changes to our supreme court 

rule governing PFA appeals, using the detailed notice-of-appeal form applicable at that time. 

Both parties filed memoranda in support of their respective positions. 

¶ 22 Under the PFA, Defendants are presumed eligible for pretrial release. 725 ILCS 5/110-

2(a) (West 2022); id. § 110-6.1(e). The State may detain an accused only if it establishes that the 

charged offense is eligible for detention and proves that (1) the proof is evident or the 

presumption great that the defendant committed that detention-eligible offense; (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, or the defendant poses a threat of willful flight; and (3) 

no condition or combination of conditions can mitigate that real and present threat or flight risk. 

Id. § 110-6.1(e). 

¶ 23 The State must prove each of these three facts by clear and convincing evidence. Id. 

Clear and convincing evidence is “that quantum of proof that leaves no reasonable doubt in the 

mind of the factfinder about the truth of the proposition in question.” In re Tiffany W., 2012 IL 

App (1st) 102492-B, ¶ 12. If the State fails to carry its burden on any of these three facts, the 

presumption of release remains, and detention is unlawful. 725 ILCS 5/110-6.1(e) (West 2022).

¶ 24 Our standard of review is unsettled. The author of this opinion is of the belief that 

detention orders should be subject to independent de novo review, with findings of historical fact 

reviewed for manifest error. See People v. Whitaker, 2024 IL App (1st) 232009, ¶ 80 (Ellis, J., 

specially concurring); People v. Saucedo, 2024 IL App (1st) 232020, ¶ 67 (Ellis, J., specially 
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concurring). The other panel justices believe that the first two factual findings—those of proofevident and dangerousness or flight risk—should be reviewed for manifest error, while the third 

factual finding regarding conditions should be reviewed for an abuse of discretion. See Saucedo, 

2024 IL App (1st) 232020, ¶¶ 31-36 (majority opinion); People v. Parker, 2024 IL App (1st) 

232164, ¶¶ 44-50. 

¶ 25 We need not resolve the standard of review here, however, as our decision would be the 

same under any standard of review.

¶ 26 There is no dispute that defendant is charged with two detainable offenses, first-degree 

murder and home invasion. Regarding the first prong of evident proof, we find that the State met 

its burden as to both offenses. Witness 1 positively identified defendant as the intruder who shot 

Victim. We are not persuaded by defendant’s argument that Witness 1 could not identify him 

under these circumstances. Witness 1 knew defendant for several years, for some time 

intimately. The fact that he was clad in black, from head to toe, with his face covered, may make 

it impossible for strangers to identify him, or for anyone to identify him in a video or a 

photograph. But someone who knew him well, indeed intimately, might still recognize him from 

other cues such as his shape, his gestures, or how he carried himself. And most importantly, the 

proffer included evidence that the intruder demanded to know where Victim was. Witness 1 

could thus identify defendant’s voice, no matter how he may have been dressed.

¶ 27 The surveillance evidence placed defendant’s car on Witness 1’s block at the time of the 

shooting. Someone got out, on the passenger side, and came running back two minutes later 

before the car took off. That person is, no doubt, the likely shooter. True, someone else was seen 

in defendant’s car about an hour earlier, getting some food at McDonald’s. But that hardly shows 

that defendant was not in his car when it arrived on Witness 1’s block. And in all probability, the 
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likely shooter was not alone in the car, given that he used a passenger’s side door. What’s more, 

the car was found at or in the immediate vicinity of defendant’s sister’s house, and defendant’s 

cell phone pinged off of towers that traced a path from Victim’s building to that house. 

¶ 28 These are only allegations at this point, of course, and nothing here should be construed 

as negating the presumption of innocence at trial and the State’s burden of proving the requisite 

elements beyond a reasonable doubt. But for our purposes here, there is clear and convincing 

evidence that defendant committed the charged offenses.

¶ 29 We recognize that defendant has no criminal history, was meaningfully employed, has 

significant familial responsibilities, and appears to be deeply rooted in his community. These 

facts all bear on the related (though distinct) questions of whether he poses a danger to the 

community or specific individuals, and whether release conditions could adequately mitigate any 

such threat and ensure his continued appearance in court. But notwithstanding these valid points 

on defendant’s side of the ledger, we ultimately agree with the trial court’s conclusion that the 

potential threat to Witness 1 was a sufficient basis for continued detention at this time. 

¶ 30 This was both a premeditated killing and a crime of passion. Take the latter point first. It 

is hardly unheard of for crimes of passion to be committed by otherwise peaceful, law-abiding 

people, as defendant admittedly appears to be. But here, he stands accused of murdering the 

lover of an ex-girlfriend who had recently rejected his apparent attempts to get back together 

with her. And while this may have been a crime of passion, it was not committed in the heat of 

passion or in the heat of the moment. To the contrary, it was a premediated act of violence in 

which defendant armed himself with a gun and took obvious measures to disguise his identity, 

thus showing that he knew full well what he was about to do after he forced his way into Witness 

1’s home. 
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¶ 31 These facts illustrate just how far defendant is capable of being driven by the passion that 

this particular relationship apparently engenders. The trial court properly found that defendant is 

a threat to the safety of Witness 1.

¶ 32 We likewise agree that there are no set of conditions that could mitigate this threat. The 

fact that Witness 1 has tried to contact defendant while he is in custody hardly shows that she 

sees him as non-threatening. (For whatever weight Witness 1’s own assessment might be worth). 

We share the trial court’s concern that home confinement, with electronic monitoring, may not 

be sufficient to restrain someone who has already been driven to such violent extremes by 

underlying motivations like these. The danger appears too great to be remedied by any 

conditions short of detention.

¶ 33 For these reasons, the judgment of the circuit court is affirmed.

¶ 34 Affirmed.