Jeremy Boshears Going Free 7 Years After Katie Kearns' Death?
JOLIET, IL — Joliet criminal defense attorney Chuck Bretz filed a motion Tuesday asking Will County Judge Dave Carlson to order the release of Jeremy Boshears, whose May 2022 first-degree murder conviction and concealment of a homicide convictions were overturned by the judge earlier this year.
Boshears has been living inside the Will County Jail for close to seven years. He was booked into the jail and given a $10 million bail on Nov. 18, 2017. Then, on Jan. 24, Judge Carlson announced in was overturning Boshears’ convictions for the November 2017 disappearance and gunshot death of Woody’s bartender Katie Kearns, age 24.
Kearns lived near Mokena at the time of her death. The judge’s decision to overturn the jury’s verdicts was made as a result of “prosecutorial misconduct,” Bretz reminded the judge in Tuesday’s motion. Bretz cited the SAFE-T-Act as his rationale for seeking his client’s release.
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According to Bretz, Boshears “does not pose a real and present threat to the safety of any person or persons in the community, nor is the defendant a risk for willful flight from prosecution.”
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The motion asks Judge Carlson “to order him to be released from custody subject to reasonable pretrial release conditions as this honorable court deems fair and just.”
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In addition, Boshears has no prior criminal record, Bretz reminded the judge.
In February, Bretz filed a three-page motion with Will County Judge Dave Carlson asking that the indictment against Boshears be dismissed. A hearing for Boshears will take place on Wednesday morning in Carlson’s courtroom. Bretz told Patch that he does not expect any decisions will be made in regard to his motion to dismiss the prosecution’s case or his motion to release Boshears under the SAFE-T-Act conditions.
A decision on both matters is probably about a month away, Bretz predicted.
“I’m not expecting a hearing to go forward tomorrow,” Bretz said at Tuesday’s interview with Joliet Patch.
If the judge agrees to dismiss the first-degree murder and concealment of a homicide charges against Boshears, then the SAFE-T-Act pretrial detention hearing becomes unnecessary, Bretz explained.
If the judge rejects his motion to dismiss the indictment, then Bretz hopes Carlson would still rule in his favor and order Boshears released from the Will County Jail. “There is no reason to believe he would be a flight risk. He would have to stay in Will County,” Bretz said. “We absolutely believe he’s innocent of the charges against him. If the court put him on electronic monitoring, we don’t mind if the court knows where he’s at, 24 hours a day.”
The body of Kearns was discovered at a farm property in rural Kankakee County in November 2017, several days after she vanished from Joliet after working at the bar along East Washington Street where Boshears and other members of the Joliet Outlaws motorcycle club patronized.
The Will County Sheriff’s detectives found Kearns’ body wrapped up in a tarp in the back of her Jeep, about an hour’s drive south of Joliet. At his trial, Boshears testified in his own defense, insisting that Kearns and he were the only people left inside the Joliet Outlaws clubhouse and that she grabbed a gun and put it to her head as he begged her not to shoot herself.
A retired police detective, Arthur Borchers, and a retired police officer who infiltrated motorcycle gangs over the span of several years both testified as part of Bretz’s defense, providing favorable testimony trying to convince the jury that Kearns died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, not as a result of a first-degree murder.
Most Recent Joliet Patch coverage:
Jeremy Boshears Must Regain His Freedom, Here’s Why: Bretz
New Trial For Jeremy Boshears In Katie Kearns Murder
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