Chicago Criminal Lawyer Blog
This is a very frequent question that I get from people that call me. They want to know how the police can arrest them without any evidence that they did anything wrong. Just because you were arrested by the police and charged with a crime does not mean that you are guilty. An arrest and a criminal charge is just an allegation. The police officer who arrested you, and the prosecutor that charged you with a crime, believe that you did something wrong. Now they must prove you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in court. There’s several things that you can do to make it more difficult for the police and the prosecutors to prove you guilty in court. Let’s talk about some of the things that you can do to help your case.
First, let’s talk about something you should not do. You should not resist the police and give them a tough time. There’s no benefit to arguing with the police officer and making their job difficult. All that can do is make the police officer angry and cause them to be a little tougher on you than they might otherwise be. In addition, don’t forget that the police officer is armed with a gun. If the police officer feels threatened, he may use physical force against you which never ends in a good way. If you resist a police officer you could be charged with Resisting a Peace Officer, or if you disobey a police officer’s instructions, you could be charged with Obstructing a Peace Officer. While both charges are misdemeanors, they are serious misdemeanors because they carry mandatory punishments which could include mandatory community service or even jail time. Simply pulling away from a police officer while they are trying to place handcuffs on you, or trying to run away from a police officer who is trying to place you under arrest, could result in serious criminal charges. Those criminal charges could stick even if you are ultimately found not guilty of the crime that you were originally arrested and charged with. Plus, if you cooperate with the police officer, the officer may go a little easy on you and may even decide not to arrest you, or even charge you with a crime if they are not sure that you did anything wrong. Even if the police officer arrests you and charges you with a crime, the fact that you cooperated with the police officer and did not give them a hard time could help you when it comes to talking to the prosecutor who is handling your case in court. The prosecutor is much more likely to go easy on you if the police officer tells them that you cooperated with them and did not give them a hard time.
The next piece of advice that I commonly give clients is to exercise their constitutional right to remain silent. I commonly see people who are arrested trying to talk themselves out of it. It almost always ends up being a bad move. If a police officer thinks that you did something wrong, you can talk to them until you are blue in the face and you will not be able to stop them from arresting you. For instance, if a police officer pulls you over and suspects that you have been drinking and the officer believes that you are drunk, the officer will take you down to the police station so that you can take a breathalyzer test. No amount of arguing and pleading with the police officer will change anything. What is more likely is that during the course of trying to convince the police officer that you should not be arrested, you are likely to say something to the police officer that could be used against you later on in court. An example is if you tell the police officer that you only had a couple of drinks and that you are fine to drive. Admitting that you have been drinking can be used against you in court later on to prove that you are guilty of a DUI.
Cook County State’s Attorney, Kim Foxx, has announced that her office will stop prosecuting cases involving people charged with driving on a suspended or revoked driver’s license based on a financial reason, such as failure to pay parking tickets. tolls or child support. The decision to do this is based on a lack of funding for the State’s Attorney’s Office which has left the office with not enough prosecutors to handle the criminal prosecutions in Cook County. This does not mean that these cases will go away in Cook County. Individual towns, cities and villages will be allowed to prosecute these cases themselves. This could mean a rise in the number of cases being charged as Municipal Violations. Each city, town, and village can set up their own administrative process which involves Hearing Officers and attorneys hired by the towns and Villages, that collect fines for violations. The standard of proof in a Municipal Ordinance Violation case is much lower than in a criminal case and the potential punishment is a monetary fine and not jail time.
On June 12, we reported that Illinois Governor, Bruce Rauner, signed a Bail Reform bill into law. The new law seeks to make changes to the bail process in Illinois by trying to move away from the requirement of posting cash as a way to avoid keeping people in jail who are poor and lack the financial means to post the cash needed to be released from county jail on minor criminal offenses. The new law requires that if the Court sets a cash bond at an initial Bond Hearing, and the defendant is unable to post the cash required, a second Bond Hearing must take place within 7 days of the arrest. The purpose of this second bond hearing is to re-examine whether there are alternatives available to the requirement that cash be posted. This second Bond Hearing is a further step towards moving away from making posting cash the main way to be released from jail pending resolution of a criminal case.
On Friday, Illinois Governor, Bruce Rauner, signed a new bill into law which takes affirmative steps to try to solve the bail problem in Illinois. The bill, called the Bail Reform Act, makes some significant changes to the bail process in Illinois and seeks to deal with the problems faced by people who are charged with minor crimes who are stuck in jail because they are unable to come up with the low amount of cash to post bail so they can be released.
Over the weekend I read an article about a 60 minutes episode about Cook County Jail and Sheriff Tom Dart. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart is in charge of running Cook County Jail, the largest single-site jail in the United States. After I finished reading the article, I was struck by some of the information contained in the article and wanted to pass along some of the things that I learned. We are used to seeing news stories about inmates who are released from prison after spending years behind bars for a crime they did not commit. We become conditioned to believe that this is all that is wrong with our criminal justice system. But this article about Cook County jail is much more disturbing because it represents a systematic injustice, legal and moral, with our criminal justice system.
Many of the people that I have represented in my 27 years of being a criminal defense lawyer have no criminal record and have little, or no experience, with the criminal justice system. For many people, the thought of facing criminal charges can be a daunting and scary experience. In addition to providing legal services in court, one of my main responsibilities as a criminal defense lawyer is to explain the legal process to my clients and to make sure they fully understand what is happening, and what will be happening in the future.
I woke up to multiple news reports this morning that former National Security advisor, Michael Flynn, has offered to cooperate with Federal Investigators in return for a grant of immunity. I was watching news coverage and notice that the media is not reporting all of the various factors and steps that have to be taken in order for this to happen. The reporting is very simple. However, the topic is certainly more complex than what is being reported. I want to focus on a couple of things that the media is not talking about.