Criminal convictions can be overturned, even decades later. Sometimes the convicted individual can prove that he or she was denied his or her constitutional rights during the trial process. Sometimes new evidence surfaces. For example, Instead of linking Nevest Coleman with the 1994 rape and murder of his acquaintance, recently-discovered DNA evidence indicates that a different person, a known serial rapist, may have been the culprit. Several weeks after 20-year-old Antwinica Bridgeman attended her birthday party and subsequently disappeared, Mr....

A licensed gun owner is the primary suspect in an East Side triple shooting that occurred in the man’s home. Police declined to say whether they intend to charge the man, who had a valid Firearm Owner Identification card, but said that “inconsistencies” in the man’s account troubled them. By all accounts, the man shot and killed a 22-year-old man, a 24-year-old woman, and a 17-year-old boy inside a house near the intersection of Ewing and 102nd Street. The man...

Cook County prosecutors may be rethinking their decision to try 16-year-old Eliza Wasni as an adult, as she is still confined in the juvenile detention center in the wake of her involvement in a bizarre and brutal killing that made headlines over Memorial Day Weekend in 2017. Since her arrest, Ms. Wasni has been involved in over 60 disciplinary incidents, including a number of violent outbursts against staff members. The young woman has also missed two court dates over the...

At a California hearing, former Northwestern University Professor Wyndam Lathem stood formally accused of the murder of Trenton Cornell-Duranleau. The 26-year-old man was found stabbed to death in the 42-year-old professor’s Chicago apartment. Prof. Lathem’s counsel suggested that he will waive extradition back to Illinois, setting up a possible Chicago jury trial. Shortly after they found the body, authorities issued arrest warrants for Prof. Lathem and 56-year-old Andrew Warren, who works in the accounting department at Oxford University. The two...

Recording Private Conversations in Illinois

posted on 8/13/17

In the old days, it was fairly easy for people to determine if their personal conversations were being recorded because private recording equipment was so arcane that about the only...

Stephanie Olsson, a partner at Glasgow & Olsson who has represented many Illinois clients in multimillion dollar divorces and complex custody issues, has just been named a top divorce attorney by the National Academy of Family Law Attorneys for 2017. Her aggressive and insightful way of succcessfully representing her clients was recognized by this award which comes on the heels of her being named a Super Lawyer Rising Star earlier this year. Only 10 Illinois lawyers under 40 received the...

Kane County prosecutors portrayed Daniel Rak as a cold-blooded murderer from the opening moments of his trial, while the defense painted a very different picture of the events that culminated in the death of 58-year-old Jeffrey Rak. Both sides agree that father and son argued after the elder Mr. Rak walked in on the younger Mr. Rak’s girlfriend as she prepared to bathe, and that argument ended violently. Several hours after he struck his father and told his girlfriend that...

The Restorative Justice Community Court, with Judge Colleen Sheehan presiding, is scheduled to hear its first North Lawndale case in August 2017. Victims, defendants, and all other interested parties will meet together under Judge Sheehan’s supervision to reach solutions to nonviolent crime, such as neighborhood drug dealing, theft, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, and so on. “This is truly the people's court,” Judge Sheehan announced. All parties will discuss restitution in a “peace circle” under the cloak of confidentiality,...

Authorities charged 16-year-old Landon Allen with first-degree murder and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon after he and another young man allegedly shot and killed a person in Washington Park; the state’s attorney said that Mr. Allen would be charged as an adult. Prosecutors claim that Mr. Allen and his friend approached 23-year-old Jermaine Brown and confronted him about a Facebook post that Mr. Allen considered derogatory. According to witnesses, the trio argued for a time before a fourth person...

Three Chicago police officers appeared in court to answer charges that they helped conceal the circumstances of a fatal police shooting involving Officer Jason Van Dyke and 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. As a result of the indictments, if Detective David March, Officer Joseph Walsh, and Officer Thomas Gaffney are called as witnesses at Officer Van Dyke’s trial, they will probably invoke their Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to testify, according to their lawyers. If so, Officer Van Dyke’s defense would suffer...

A trio of Vernon Hills residents are in police custody after officers used an obscure legal loophole to conduct a warrantless search of the premises. Officers approached the residence of 33-year-old Dmitry Kolesnikov to perform an unprompted wellness check, because they suspected that he was intoxicated. During the course of a subsequent search, they found an unspecified number of marijuana plants in the basement. Using that discovery to obtain a search warrant, officers returned some time later and recovered 17...

Grainy surveillance video, a stale eyewitness account, and a circumstantial DNA test were sufficient for authorities to charge 24-year-old Jeffery Freeman with an October 2014 murder. How will that evidence hold up in court? Police say that fellow gang members prompted Mr. Freeman to confront Torrence Pickens for allegedly violating gang territory. Video from a nearby apartment complex captured footage of a man who matches Mr. Freeman’s description wielding a pistol and smoking a cigarette as he approached Mr. Pickens....

The United States had only been a nation for about 30 years when, 205 years ago in June, John Kinzie killed Jean La Lime in what several contemporaries and witnesses described as an argument turned violent. A few historians still consider Mr. Kinzie, who opened a trading post on the current Tribune Tower site in 1779, to be the founder of Chicago. Mr. La Lime was a French trapper and interpreter. While the two were geographic neighbors, their relationship was...

Mediation is not for everyone. The former Chicago Bulls standout and the reality television star surprised almost everyone when their lawyers asked a Fort Lauderdale judge to postpone the case and give the two a chance to reconcile. In October of 2016, Mr. Pippen filed for divorce, alleging irreconcilable differences. At the time, rumors were circulating that Ms. Pippen was involved with hip-hop artist Future. In the pleadings, Mr. Pippen asked the court to overturn a previous marital agreement. Then,...

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...