One Court Barred Him From Filing. The Other Never Did — and Refused Him Anyway.

The Second District at least has an order. Whatever anyone thinks of it, a written instrument exists saying this appellant shall file nothing further, and an argument about its scope is an argument about a real document. The First District has nothing of the kind. Its July 31 order denies a motion, appoints the State Appellate Defender, and extends the time to file the record. That is the entire operative text. Four days later, an emergency motion submitted into that appeal came back rejected, with a rejection reason of “Rejection by Clerk” and a rejection comment of nine words.

The sentence that makes it impossible

The First District’s own order provides that the appellant “is given an extension of time to September 9, 2026 to properly file the record in this Court.” The court put the record obligation on him, by name, with a date. Then the clerk’s office told him to go talk to his lawyer instead of filing. A single person cannot obey both instructions. If the record is not on file by September 9, the appeal is exposed — on a deadline the court imposed on a man its own intake queue told not to act.

The motion asks a question, not for a favor

The August 13 First District motion is four pages long and does something unusual: paragraph 2 asks the court to say which instruction governs, and states out loud that an answer against the movant resolves the problem just as well — because paragraph 3 then makes September 9 somebody else’s obligation. There is no version of an answer that leaves him worse off than silence does. That is the design.

Rule 9 was already the remedy, and it was already used

The rejection notice itself says so. Illinois Supreme Court Rule 9 permits a filer to move, within five court days, to have the corrected document treated as filed on the date it was originally submitted. On August 4 — inside the window — a Rule 9(f) motion was filed asking for exactly that, with the rejection notice attached as Exhibit 1 so the court reads the nine words in their native form rather than anyone’s summary of them.

Two districts, kept deliberately apart

Every document in the August 13 round names only its own district’s clerk, its own district’s counsel, its own district’s orders, and its own envelope number. There is exactly one exception and it is disclosed on the face of the paper: the First District filings produce the Second District’s July 31 order as a single exhibit, because asking one court for leave to file while concealing that a different court has already said no would be concealment. Both First District documents state four separate times that they seek no ruling about the other court. Candor is what makes the request grantable.

Every transmission in the August round, with the proof that exists for each.