Morgan County Court denied a decades long appeal from a Rushville man deemed to be sexually violent for more than 3 decades on Wednesday.
Raymond Rainey of Rushville and formerly of Morgan County was first sentenced to prison for sexual offenses back in 1978 for taking indecent liberties with a child. Subsequent incidents with minors occurred again in 1984, 1986, and 1993. In the 1993 case, Rainey was found guilty but mentally ill of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and was sentenced to 12 years in prison at Dixon Special Treatment Facility. He was later transferred to the Big Muddy Correctional Center before being put on mandatory supervised release in April 1998. He was incarcerated shortly thereafter for a traffic offense and failing to comply with sex offender counseling. Rainey was also found to be in the process of grooming a minor while on release as well as allegedly re-offending with the individual.
In September 1998, Morgan County court filed a petition describing Rainey’s mental health issues and asked that he be labeled as sexually violent and remanded to the care of the Department of Human Services. During testimony heard by several experts over the next 3 years, Rainey was described as having a mental deficiency and also being sexually deviant while incarcerated. In February 2000, Morgan County court conducted a hearing to accept Rainey’s admission set forth in the state’s petition for the sexually violent label. Richard Crews, who was appointed defense counsel, as well as the state had to explain the charges paragraph by paragraph to Rainey. Rainey then plead to those admissions within the petition. Rainey was eventually remanded to the Department of Human Services after the final hearing.
He petitioned the Illinois Supreme Court under counsel by Allan Yow on the findings in 2001 to have the sexually violent label removed. On Wednesday in Morgan County Court, Rainey’s petition to have the label removed once again on the grounds that the state had no factual basis of the finding and that they didn’t follow proper procedures. The court once again denied his request.