35 years ago, in June of 1982, a Washington, D.C. jury declared that John Hinckley Jr. was not guilty of wounding President Ronald Reagan and three other people, because he was legally insane. During his two-month trial, government attorneys spent about a half-million dollars, a staggering sum at the time, attempting to convince jurors that Mr. Hinckley was legally sane on March 30, 1981, the day of the shooting. But the jury concluded that the prosecutor did not prove sanity...

The 2016-17 Supreme Court term has been devoid of many headline-grabbing cases, but Packingham v. North Carolina is one of the few exceptions. This case is noteworthy because in it the Supreme Court has ruled that your right to use Facebook is protected under the first amendment. The Case The dispute centered around a North Carolina law which prohibits registered sex offenders from accessing “a commercial social networking Web site where the sex offender knows that the site permits minor...

26-year-old Marco Robertson was charged with second degree murder after he allegedly stabbed his stepfather multiple times following a family quarrel. Mr. Robertson stayed about three days a week at a home on West 54th Street where his mother and stepfather, 44-year-old James Rice, also resided. The two men argued because Mr. Rice insisted that Mr. Robertson should announce his presence and not simply walk into the house. According to a police report, Mr. Rice berated Mr. Robertson for several...

A 16-year-old girl from the Norwood Park area of Lincolnwood quietly slipped into the backseat of an Uber car and then

Rep. Elgie Sims (D-Chicago) proclaimed that the new Bail Reform Act would “make Illinois a national leader in bail reform.” The measure, which applies to most non-violent misdemeanors and felonies, such as DUI, theft, and drug possession, creates a presumption that monetary bail is inappropriate in these cases. Instead, judges are encouraged to order alternative measures, such as electronic monitoring, heightened reporting, and daily curfews. If a judge does order monetary bail, there must be a bail reduction hearing within...

Following an eight-month, multi-agency investigation that yielded little evidence, Kane County prosecutors charged six men with

A judge denied bail for 31-year-old Waddel Adams, who is charged with home invasion, first-degree murder, and unlawful possession of a firearm following a fatal argument with his neighbor. By all accounts, Mr. Adams got along reasonably well with 30-year-old Bobby Lloyd Sr. until one of Mr. Lloyd’s four young children apparently hit Mr. Adams’ car with a rock. According to witnesses, an angry Mr. Adams confronted the child and his mother with a baseball bat. That incident ended without...

A crowd of spectators at a pretrial hearing saw Judge Vincent Gaughan approve the murder charges against a Chicago police officer; the lead defense attorney also tipped his hand as to his trial strategy. In October of 2014, Officer Van Dyke was among the officers who responded to a disturbance call involving 17-year-old Laquan McDonald; according to a witness, Mr. McDonald had burglarized several trucks in a parking lot and threatened the owner with a knife. Officer Van Dyke fired...

An Illinois insurance agent faces charges that he bilked more than

A Chicago man who was 15 when he pulled the trigger, had his sentence partially commuted in a gang-related double murder; the resentencing took place because the United States Supreme Court has declared that mandatory life sentences for juvenile offenders are unconstitutional. Eric Anderson was a member of the notorious Almighty Popes when he shot into a van carrying members of a rival gang and several other people. Two 13-year-old girls, Helena Martin and Carrie Hovel, were killed. At the...

A social media rivalry ended violently when a woman ran over her romantic rival in front of numerous witnesses. Cook County prosecutors charged 24-year-old Chynna Stapleton with murder in the death of 18-year-old Tatyanna Lewis. The two women had apparently exchanged semi-violent messages over Facebook about a man who was apparently Ms. Lewis’ boyfriend and the father of Ms. Stapleton’s child. The online squabble erupted into a physical altercation in Morgan Park; the fight later turned into something of a...

One man was caught with some 35,000 heroin doses; officials believe that the seven pounds of heroin have a street value of approximately $700,000. Another man was pulled over for a traffic stop and arrested for possessing heroin that may have been laced with fentanyl, a substance that is linked to a recent overdose death. The McHenry County Sheriff's Department began surveilling 47-year-old Roman Castro after they received information from an unnamed source that Mr. Castro had a significant amount...

Almost all DUI enforcement contacts trigger a mandatory drivers’ license suspension, either because the defendant refused to provide a chemical specimen or the defendant’s BAC exceeded the legal limit. License suspension hearings are not easy to win because the deck is stacked against the defendant and the issues are quite narrow. Nevertheless, aggressive representation at this hearing is often critical to a successful outcome in court. The only way to avoid automatic suspension is if the officer reverses course and...

A judge claimed that a defense attorney’s motion to suppress evidence was based on “

Regardless of the specific claims or defenses, Illinois judges nearly always grant emergency protective orders, largely because they only hear one side of the story. Therefore, the issue for alleged abusers is not so much what defenses to present but rather how to deal with the fallout from an EOP. In most cases, violating a protective order is a Class A misdemeanor, which means a maximum one year in jail and $2,500 fine. A person violates a protective order if...