YOUR RIGHT TO COMMUNICATE WHILE IN POLICE CUSTODY IN ILLINOIS

Under 725 ILCS 5/103-3.5, you have the right to communicate free of charge with an attorney of your choice and members of your family as soon as possible upon being taken into police custody, but no later than 3 hours after arrival at the first place of detention. You must be given access to a telephone to make 3 calls. If you are moved to a new place of detention, your right to make these calls is renewed.

If police violate these rights, your statements to them are presumed inadmissible as evidence. However, the state may then show that your statement was voluntarily given and is reliable based on the totality of the circumstances. The court may consider whether police knowingly prevented or delayed your right to communicate or failed to comply with the requirements of the law.

The 3-hour rule does not apply if you are asleep, unconscious or otherwise incapacitated or if exigent circumstances prevent police from complying. Exigent circumstances include when someone’s safety is threatened. The police report must then document the exigent circumstance. Once the exigent circumstance ends, the right to make three phone calls within three hours resumes.

The police must display a notice of your right to the calls and must display the public defender’s phone number, where available. Police must maintain records of the number of calls you made, when you made them, and the reason if you did not make the calls.
Before this law took effect on 1/1/22, police could hold you a “reasonable time” before allowing you to make phone calls.

If you have questions about this or another related Illinois criminal or traffic matter, please contact Matt Keenan at 847-568-0160 or email matt@mattkeenanlaw.com.

(Besides Skokie, Matt Keenan also serves the communities of Arlington Heights, Chicago, Deerfield, Des Plaines, Evanston, Glenview, Morton Grove, Mount Prospect, Niles, Northbrook, Park Ridge, Rolling Meadows, Wilmette and Winnetka.)