Articles Posted in Pre-Trial Proceedings

The Grand Jury plays a very important role in our criminal justice system. Few people understand what a Grand Jury is and why it plays such an important role in our criminal justice system. A big reason for this is that the entire process is clouded in such secrecy. Clients are surprised and scared to hear that their case is going to a Grand Jury or that they have been indicted by a Grand Jury. The term “Grand Jury” can be scary for a criminal defendant who doesn’t understand what a Grand Jury is. Let’s talk about what a Grand Jury is and what role the Grand Jury plays in our criminal justice system.

Why Are There Grand Juries?

According to the Illinois Constitution, you cannot be brought to trial for a crime that carries a prison sentence unless you have been Indicted by a Grand Jury or have been given a Preliminary Hearing and a Judge has found Probable Cause to believe that a crime was committed and that you are the one that committed the crime. The term “Indictment” is a fancy word for being charged with a crime.

The right to a jury trial is one of the fundamental constitutional principles that applies to all criminal cases. If you are accused of a crime that carries a punishment of incarceration for more than 6 months, you have a constitutional right to a trial by a jury. The Illinois Constitution also guarantees you the right to a jury trial in a criminal case. Let’s talk a little bit about what a jury trial is and what happens in a typical jury trial in Illinois.

How Are Jurors Chosen for Jury Duty in Illinois?

The Clerk of the Court will receive a database containing the names and addresses of a pool of potential jurors in each County. The database containing the names and addresses of potential jurors are compiled from three sources.

In general, there are limits to the amount of time that state prosecutors have to bring criminal charges before they are barred by the Statute of Limitations from filing any criminal charges. If the state files criminal charges beyond the time limit, or the Statute of Limitations, the person charged with the crime can appear in court and get the criminal charges dismissed.

The general rule is that the Statute of Limitations for most felonies is 3 years from the date of the offense. The Statute of Limitations for most misdemeanors is 18 months the date of the offense. However, for some crimes, there is no Statute of Limitations. There are certain instances in which the Statute of Limitations can be tolled, or paused, for a period of time. In other instances, the Statute of Limitations can be extended for a period of time. The Statute of Limitations for your particular case will vary depending on a variety of factors that apply to the particular crime that you are being charged with, or the specific facts of your case.

The Statute of Limitations will be tolled, or paused, under the following circumstances:

If you are charged with a felony criminal offense in Illinois, you need to know what you are being charged with and what class felony that criminal charge is classified as. Generally, felonies in Illinois are categorized into one of the four classes of felonies in Illinois. Depending on which class your felony is classified as being, the potential penalty will will vary depend on what class felony your crime falls into. Murder is not considered to be part of the four classes of felonies in Illinois. Murder is considered its own special class.

Generally speaking, felonies are placed into one of four classes. The different classes of felonies in Illinois are set forth as follows:

Class 4 Felonies

If you are charged with a Misdemeanor crime in Illinois, you need to understand what a Misdemeanor is and what the implications could be for your future.  A Felony criminal charge is much more severe than a Misdemeanor criminal charge. But that doesn’t mean that a Misdemeanor is not a big deal. While whether you are charged with a Misdemeanor or a Felony may make all the difference in the world  you need to understand what a Misdemeanor is and what you are looking at when you go to Court.

Generally, a Misdemeanor carries a maximum penalty of up to one year in jail. If you are sentenced to jail for a Misdemeanor, the jail sentence will be served in County Jail while a Felony carries a potential jail sentence of more than one year in State Prison.

Within Misdemeanor crimes, there are three separate classes of Misdemeanors. The three different classes of Misdemeanors are set forth below:

In a closely-watched decision regarding the privacy rights of cell phone users and the power of the police to obtain cell phone tracking information, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the police must obtain a warrant before obtaining the tracking information for the cell phones for most cellphone users.

Timothy Carpenter was suspected in a series of robberies of RadioShack and T-Mobile stores in several States throughout the country. The FBI had obtained a simple court order allowing them to obtain 27 days of Carpenter’s cell phone location data from Sprint and from MetroPCS. The court order that had been used by the FBI was a simple court order that did not require that the FBI show probable cause for a search warrant. In response to the court order, the FBI was given a 12,898 location point catalog of where Carpenter had been over a period of 27 days. The location data represented an average of 101 data point locations per day. Carpenter was eventually convicted of the robberies and sentenced to over a hundred years in prison. During closing arguments, the prosecutor made a major point of the location data to help bolster his argument that Carpenter had committed the robberies.

On appeal, Carpenter argued that the location data that had been obtained by the FBI should not be admitted in his case because they were obtained without a search warrant. Lower courts disagreed with Carpenter and ruled that the FBI was not required to obtain a search warrant in order to get the location data from the cell phone providers.

I recently met with a client who had a jury trial for a Domestic Battery charge. After several days of a trial and deliberations, the jury could not agree on a verdict and the judge declared a mistrial. Shortly after the mistrial was declared, the prosecution decided that they would retry the client and he came to my office looking to hire me for the second trial. The client had several questions about what happens at a re-trial and whether Double Jeopardy applied to his case. I answered his questions and realized that people misunderstand what Double Jeopardy means.

In order for you to be convicted of a crime by a jury, all 12 members of the jury must agree that you are guilty. At the same time, in order to be found not guilty of a crime by a jury, all 12 members of the jury must agree that you are not guilty. Their verdict must be unanimous. If a jury is unable to come up with a unanimous verdict, the Court will declare a mistrial. A mistrial does not necessarily mean that the case is over. When a mistrial happens, the prosecution will decide whether they want to try you once again for the same crime. The decision about whether the state will try you again for the same crime is a decision that rests with the prosecution. From experience, prosecutors will take a variety of factors into consideration when deciding whether to have another trial. A major factor for prosecutors is how close did they come to winning the first jury trial? In other words, if a vast majority of the jurors were in favor of finding you guilty, it is much more likely that the state will try you again. If the vast majority of the jurors were in favor of finding you not guilty, it is much more likely that the state will drop the case and not seek another trial.

The legal grounds for you not to be subjected to another trial can be found in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Section 10 of the Illinois Constitution.

Last week I had a meeting with a client in my office in Schaumburg who was being charged with a felony in Rolling Meadows. The client has a lawyer who was representing him for the case. The client came in for a consultation because he was not happy with the services that his current lawyer was providing and was considering hiring me to represent him in the case. The client told me that he had spoken to his lawyer and requested copies of the police reports. His lawyer refused to provide copies of the police report and the client was very upset with that decision.

This is a very common scenario. I frequently talk with clients who want copies of the police reports so that they can review them at home with their friends and family. I’m sure that many of those clients want to talk to another lawyer and get a second opinion. When a criminal defense lawyer tells a client that they cannot give them copies of the police reports, the clients usually think that’s because the lawyer doesn’t want to lose the case. While that may be the reason behind refusing to give a client police reports in some cases, people need to understand that your criminal defense lawyer is prohibited from giving you copies of the police reports. Let me explain why.

Your lawyer is required to follow certain rules. Your lawyers’ conduct is governed by the Rules of Professional Responsibility. Those rules provide for certain ethical responsibilities that lawyers have to their clients and to the Court. The Supreme Court of Illinois has also enacted certain rules which limit what your lawyer can, or cannot do. The Supreme Court Rules govern what happens in court and what your lawyer can or cannot do while they are representing you in a criminal case in court. Your lawyer is required to follow all those rules.