Brickey waives right to preliminary hearing, enters plea of not guilty

By Gary Scott on May 24, 2017 at 12:23pm

A former county employee facing multiple felony charges waived her right to a preliminary hearing and entered an initial plea of not guilty yesterday.

Forty-one year old Stacy Brickey appeared in Morgan County court yesterday along with Public Defender Tom Piper.

Brickey faces two different felony counts, the first dealing with alleged theft of county property in excess of $10,000 and the second regarding alleged official misconduct during her time as Administrative Assistant for the Morgan County Highway Department.

Morgan County State’s Attorney Gray Noll breaks down what occurred at yesterday’s brief appearance.

“In Illinois, a felony case can only proceed in one of two ways. One, if you bring the case in front of a grand jury and the grand jury returns a bill of indictment, or two, if you bring the case before a judge through filing of information, and in that case, a preliminary hearing has to be held. Yesterday, Ms. Brickey’s waived her right for a preliminary hearing, which basically meant that the state did not have to put on any evidence for the judge to determine that probably cause existed in order to move forward on the felony offense,” says Noll.

Brickey entered an initial plea of not guilty to both counts. Noll explains what the court’s next proceedings will be.

“As of right now, (Brickey) entered a plea of not guilty. It is set for a pre-trial case status on July 5th at 9 a.m., and at that point we may know more as far as whether this will be a trial or she will ultimately plead guilty,”

Noll says it’s still early for a felony case. While Noll expects a continuance on July 5, if Brickey requests a jury trial at the next hearing, the trial would begin the following week.