People v. Devine
Annotate this Case
The defendant, Justin Devine, was convicted in the circuit court of Kane County of nonconsensual dissemination of private sexual images. He appealed to the appellate court arguing that the State failed to prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The appellate court agreed with Devine and reduced his conviction to disorderly conduct. The State appealed this decision to the Supreme Court of Illinois.
The key issues before the Supreme Court of Illinois included whether Devine "disseminated" the images when he sent them to himself and whether the victim was identifiable from the images. The court held that Devine did disseminate the images when he texted them from the victim's phone to his own, rejecting the reasoning of the appellate court that Devine did not make the images "more widely known" because he already had knowledge of them. The court reasoned that the statute prohibits dissemination of images, not knowledge of images, and that Devine's act of sending the images to himself was an act of dissemination.
However, the Supreme Court of Illinois agreed with the appellate court that the victim was not identifiable from the images. The images were close-ups of female genitalia and did not contain any distinctive identifiers. The court concluded that the fact the victim was wearing red nail polish on the day she went to the store or that the images were on her phone did not make her identifiable from the images.
Thus, the court affirmed the appellate court's judgment in reducing Devine's conviction to disorderly conduct.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.