When Paul Boron was summoned to the principal’s office to answer for missed detentions in February, he pressed “record” on his cell phone just before arriving. According to Boron, he argued with principal David Conrad and assistant principal Nathan Short for about 10 minutes, before mentioning that he was recording everything.
Conrad immediately told Boron he’d committed a felony, and “promptly” ended the conversation. Sure enough, two months later, Boron was charged with a single count of eavesdropping, which is a class 4 felony in Illinois.
He’s 13 years old. In an interview with Illinois Policy, Boron speaks candidly about his fears.
“If I do go to court and get wrongfully convicted, my whole life is ruined,” said Boron, who lives with his mother and four siblings in Manteno, Illinois, an hour southwest of Chicago. “I think they’re going too far.”
Predictably, Conrad, Short, and the Manteno School District are refusing to comment on why they pushed for felony charges against a student, citing student privacy and pending litigation. However, Illinois Policy’s Austin Berg pulled the case file.
In his petition to bring the charge, Kankakee County Assistant State’s Attorney Mark Laws wrote that Boron on Feb. 16 “used a cellphone to surreptitiously record a private conversation between the minor and school officials without consent of all parties.”
Seems like much ado about nothing, right? Wrong. Illinois has “one of the nation’s most severe and controversial” eavesdropping laws on the books. After numerous cases involving citizens being arrested for recording interactions with police, the Illinois Supreme Court struck down the worst of the law over four years ago—but the state legislature quickly replaced it with new rules that might leave Boron unable to shake this felony charge.
In March 2014, the Illinois Supreme Court struck down Illinois’ eavesdropping law, holding that it “criminalize[d] a wide range of innocent conduct” and violated residents’ First Amendment rights.
But during lame-duck legislative session in December 2014, the Illinois General Assembly passed and Gov. Pat Quinn signed a new eavesdropping law. In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, lawmakers included changes aimed at allowing residents to record interactions with police, for example, but kept intact the “all-party consent” provisions and introduced a difficult-to-gauge standard for when a person must get consent for recording.
Specifically, the new law made it a felony to surreptitiously record any “private conversation,” defined as “oral communication between [two] or more persons” where at least one person has a “reasonable expectation” of privacy.
That grey area of “reasonable expectations” of privacy is where things get interesting. Boron is the only one speaking about that day and the argument, and he maintains that the 10-minute argument he recorded took place “in the reception area of the school secretary’s office, with the door open to the hallway.” So, to hear Boron tell it, this was not a closed-door meeting. Did anyone have a reasonable expectation of privacy in a reception area?
One of the sponsors of the 2014 replacement bill says the murky wording was intentional.
We made a decision "not to specifically state that citizens can record cops," state representative Elaine Nekritz says. “We just can't write every circumstance in which someone has a reasonable expectation of privacy." Like the definition of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, she says, "we know it when we see it."
It will be interesting to see what the Illinois justice system “sees” here. In the meantime, Boron’s case is a headline-grabbing deterrent to other young people who might be enduring situations where they believe a recording is the only way to get adults to actually listen to them.
This writer is wondering what’s on that recording that could cause school administrators to push for felony charges. Boron, meanwhile (who again, is 13 years old and legally blind in one eye) tells Illinois Policy that he’s worried about what his future might look like with a felony on his record—especially coupled with his disability.
Boron isn’t quite sure what he wants to be when he grows up. He’s interested in serving in the military, but his vision impairment limits his opportunities there. And if he’s exposed to the juvenile justice system his opportunities could narrow further.
“It blew my mind that they would take it that far … I want to see him be able to be happy and live up to his full potential in life, especially with the disability he has. It would be heart-wrenching,” his mother, Leah McNally, said of the possibility that her son is found guilty.
“He didn’t do anything wrong, and for him to be snatched from his family, the emotional impact that’s going to have … it’s just going to follow him throughout his years.”
With the law and its grey areas stacked against Paul Boron, it seems entirely possible that Illinois’ notorious and racist school-to-prison pipeline might just get a new Caucasian member soon.