In April of this year, the United States Supreme Court handed down a decision in Rodriguez v. United States which places serious limitations on traffic stops conducted by the police. In Rodriguez the Supreme Court ruled that the police cannot extend the duration of a traffic stop, even for a “de-minimis” amount of time, without reasonable suspicion for reasons unrelated to vehicle and driver safety.  A police officer stopped Rodriguez for driving on the shoulder in Nebraska.  After the officer did everything related to the stop, including checking his license, insurance and issuing a warning, he asked Rodriguez if he would give him permission to walk his dog around his vehicle to check for the presence of drugs.  When Rodriguez refused, the officer told him to wait until a second squad car arrived with the dog.  After the second officer arrived, the officer walked the dog around Rodriguez’s vehicle and notified the officer that it had detected drugs.  The officer searched the vehicl...

The gun violence in Chicago has been the source of concern among the citizens and politicians in Illinois for a long time.  Every day we are inundated with news of shootings and homicides throughout the City. When the weather heats up we know that the number of shootings will go up.  On Monday morning we open the paper to find out how many people were shot and how many were killed over the weekend.  In the effort to come up with a way to stop all the shootings, we need to understand how illegal guns are making their way to the streets of Chicago.  Illinois has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the United States.  To own a gun in your home, Illinois requires that you get a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) Card which requires that a thorough background search be conducted by the Illinois State Police.  FOID cards can be revoked for good cause by the Illinois State Police.  Citizens are generally not allowed to carry a gun outside their home unless they have an FOID Card and...

Yesterday the United States Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals which upheld gun laws in New York and Connecticut which bans military assault style weapons, like the ones used in Sandy Hook in 2012, Santa Barbara a few months ago, and Orlando last week.  The gun laws in question were enacted by New York and Connecticut in 2012 after the school shooting in Sandy Hook Connecticut which took the lives of 20 young children and 6 teachers.  Gun rights advocates filed suit alleging that the prohibitions violated the 2nd Amendment and prior Supreme Court precedent which upheld the right of the public to own firearms for self protection. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers New York and Connecticut, found in favor of the states and upheld the laws which enacted gun prohibitions.  The gun rights activists appealed to the United States Supreme Court.  Yesterday, the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal, without comment, which h...

As part of the 2017 budget process, the Kane County Board held a hearing in which the Kane County Public Defender, Kelli Childress, asked for more money to hire 2 more attorneys for her office.  Childress testified that the cost to add 2 attorneys will be $72,000 a year.  In the hearing, Childress claimed that the attorneys in her office have a higher average caseload per attorney than any other neighboring county.  She presented the board with statistics which show that attorneys in her office in Kane County are only able to spend less than 3 hours on each misdemeanor case they are handling.  She said that the high average caseload along with a lack of investigative resources raises questions about the quality of the legal defense services that her office can provide indigent criminal defendants.  She went on to further state that the lack of resources could cause her attorneys to put pressure on their clients to plead guilty and avoid fighting their cases.  This lack of resources ...

We are being inundated with news stories about Donald Trump claiming that a Federal Judge of Mexican heritage presiding over a fraud case involving him should recuse himself from hearing his case because of his ethnic background.  This story is dominating the news and sparked a partisan debate over when a judge should recuse himself. Well, the United States Supreme Court just decided a case involving when a Judge should recuse himself.  In 1986, Ronald Castille was Philadelphia’s District Attorney.  Terrance Williams and a friend, both 18 years old, had been charged with murdering Amos Norwood with a tire iron.  The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office was considering whether to proceed with the Death Penalty against Williams.  A subordinate of Castille recommended that they proceed with the Death Penalty against Williams and Castille signed off on doing just that.  Williams was eventually convicted of Murder and sentenced to death.  Later on Ca...

The Illinois legislature has passed a bill that would remove expungment fees in Cook County for people who were never convicted.  This is one of the most promising and positive changes to the expungement process.  If you are arrested and your case is dismissed or you are found not guilty, even though you technically do not have a criminal record, a public record of the case exists and the only way to remove that public record is to petition the Court to expunge, or to remove the case from the public record.  The expungment process can take several months, and depending on the county the case was in, could cost you several hundred dollars.  House Bill 6328, which was passed in the last legislative session, would establish a pilot program in Cook County which would remove fees for cases resulting in “release without charging,” or an arrest which resulted in dismissal, acquittal or a conviction that was later overturned.  An earlier version of the bill would have applied to every Count...

In a 7 to 4 decision, an en banc panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that there is no 2nd Amendment right to carry a concealed firearm, meaning that the states can prohibit or restrict the public from carrying concealed firearms.  The case is Peruta v. County of San Diego. The case involved a requirement in San Diego County that in order to obtain a license to carry a firearm citizens had to prove “good cause” to carry a firearm. The Plaintiffs challenged the requirement by arguing that the county did not consider the general right to self defense as enough to obtain a license to carry a concealed firearm.  The case was decided by the entire panel of 9th Circuit Judges.  The majority found that there is no right to carry a conceal firearm in the 2nd Amendment.  In the majority opinion, the cases of District of Columbia v. Heller and  McDonald v. City of Chicago to support the argument that the 2nd Amendment does not protect the right to carry a concealed firearm.  Justic...