Posted on March 09, 2015 in Criminal Defense

Trespassing, in a very basic sense, is being where you are not supposed to be. People often think of it as being on another person’s land without permission. But Illinois’ trespassing statutes actually prohibit much more than that. It is important to understand what constitutes trespassing because ignorance of the law is not a defense, and if you wind up trespassing you may find yourself in need of a criminal defense lawyer.

Criminal Trespass to Vehicles

Illinois statute prohibits what it calls “trespass to vehicles.” A person commits this crime when he or she knowingly enters or operates a vehicle, aircraft, watercraft, or snowmobile without authority. This crime is a Class A misdemeanor.

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 Posted on March 04, 2015 in Criminal Defense

We all know that if we break or destroy something that belongs to another person we are likely on the hook for the costs of replacing or repairing what we damaged. What some people do not realize until they find themselves in need of a criminal defense lawyer is that breaking the property of another is often a crime that can carry jail time.

Criminal Damage to Property

Illinois statute creates the offense of criminal damage to property. There are nine different ways a person can commit this offense. They include:

1. Knowingly damaging another person’s property without the owner’s consent;
2. Recklessly damaging another person’s property with fire or explosives;
3. Knowingly starting a fire on someone else’s land without the owner’s consent;

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 Posted on March 03, 2015 in Criminal Defense

Thousands of people have been prosecuted in Illinois for having guns. Up until the last couple of years, Illinois was the lone holdout state that did not even allow for concealed carry permits. Our gun crime laws are harsh. However, in addition to being harsh, as it turns out, some of them are also unconstitutional. When a criminal law is held unconstitutional, then prosecutors are no longer allowed to prosecute people under that law.

What Gun Law is Unconstitutional?

Illinois law includes a crime called “aggravated unlawful use of a weapon.” This statute makes it illegal to possess a firearm under various different sets of circumstances. Some of this law is still enforceable. But other portions of it are unconstitutional because they violate the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms. For example, the portion of the law that makes it always a crime to carry an uncased, loaded, immediately accessible firearm on your person or in a vehicle goes too far. It acts as a comprehensive ban on the use of firearms for self-defense outside the home, thus rendering it unconstitutional. Similarly, the part of the law that prohibits all carrying of such guns on public ways is unconstitutional for the same reason.

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 Posted on February 26, 2015 in Criminal Defense

We have all heard the expression “don’t do the crime if you don’t want to do the time.” But in Illinois, as in most states, there are ways you can wind up doing the time even if you yourself were not the one to do the crime. These are known as inchoate offenses, and they include offenses such as attempt and solicitation. One of the interesting things about Illinois law is that not only do we have laws against attempt and solicitation, but here it is also illegal to attempt to solicit.

What are Attempt and Solicitation?

Both attempt and solicitation are defined by Illinois statutes. One is guilty of solicitation when he or she, with the intent that a criminal offense be committed, commands, encourages, or requests that another person commit the criminal offense. A person commits “attempt” when he or she, with the intent to commit a specific crime, takes a substantial step toward committing that crime. Thus if you ask or pay someone else to commit a crime for you, that is solicitation. If instead you take a substantial step toward committing the crime yourself, then attempt is what you are guilty of doing.

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 Posted on February 24, 2015 in Illinois Laws

Typically when people think of criminal cases, they think of things like theft or murder or drug dealing. However, each state also criminalizes some relatively inoffensive conduct. For example, Illinois has made it a criminal offense to sell or rent certain violent video games to minors.

What Illinois Considers to be a Violent Video Game

The Illinois legislature took it upon itself to define what constitutes a “violent” video game. It crafted a law that defines a violent video game as any video game that depicts human-on-human violence where a player kills or otherwise causes serious physical harm to another human. This serious physical harm includes things like death, dismemberment, decapitation, mutilation of body parts, amputation, or disfigurement. It also includes rape. What this means is that games where the player’s character is human and the player kills another human character, would be covered. Meanwhile, games where the player kills other characters, but those characters are aliens, would not be covered.

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 Posted on February 19, 2015 in Vehicular Hijacking

To many people, hijacking sounds like something that happens on an airplane in an action movie from the late twentieth century. While it is that, hijacking is also a type of crime that happens right in in Illinois. Specifically, Illinois law prohibits what it calls “vehicular hijacking.” If you find yourself charged with this crime, you will need the help of a felony criminal defense attorney.

What is Vehicular Hijacking?

Illinois statute defines vehicular hijacking as a person knowingly taking a motor vehicle from another person by either using force or by threatening the imminent use of force. It is basically the same as robbery, except instead of taking some other type of property, the hijacker takes the victim’s car. It is important to note that the car has to be taken directly from the person or from the person’s presence. Thus, stealing a car from an empty garage would not count as vehicular hijacking. Vehicular hijacking is a slightly more serious offense than robbery, in that even in its most benign forms it is a Class 1 felony.

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 Posted on February 17, 2015 in Criminal Defense

“I got robbed.” This is a statement that is used very often in our contemporary society. While sometimes it is applied metaphorically, such as when complaining about a call in a sporting event, we usually mean it to imply that someone stole something from us. However, like many areas of criminal law, the common understanding of this term and the legal definition are not the exact same. Not all victims of theft are robbery victims and not all thieves are robbers. Instead, robbery is a very specific type of theft.

What is Robbery in Illinois?

In Illinois, the offense of robbery is defined by statute. As one would assume, robbery requires one person to take property from another person. This can be any property except for certain motor vehicles, which are covered by a separate law. What differentiates robbery from mere theft is that in order for a taking of property to be a robbery, the robber must either:

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 Posted on February 12, 2015 in Criminal Defense

Most crimes are standalone crimes. However, there are some crimes that act as add-ons of a sort or as ways for the prosecution to try to punish someone not just for committing a crime, but also for the way in which he or she committed the crime. These additional offenses can increase the severity of the possible punishment for a crime, which makes it extremely important that you have the assistance of an experienced criminal defense attorney. One example of this sort of additional offense is a crime many have never heard of: unlawful transfer of a telecommunications device.

What is Unlawful Transfer of a Telecommunications Device?

From the name of this crime, it sounds like it might have something to do with defrauding a cell phone company or giving a kid a cell phone without his or her parents’ permission. While either of those activities can land you in hot water, they are not quite what this law is about. Under Illinois statute you are guilty of this crime if you transfer a telecommunications device (like a cell phone) to someone under the age of 18 with the intent that the device be used to commit a crime under the Illinois criminal code, the Cannabis Control Act, the Illinois Controlled Substances Act, or the Methamphetamine Control and Community Protection Act. This crime is a Class A misdemeanor, which means you could be sentenced to a term in jail not to exceed one year. Property forfeiture is also a possibility. Thus, if one were to participate in a criminal enterprise of some sort with a minor and that person were to give the minor a cell phone or similar device in order to facilitate that criminal offense, the person could be charged both with that underlying crime and with this additional crime.

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 Posted on February 11, 2015 in Theft

Many people think of shoplifting or retail theft as a relatively minor crime. In Illinois that is absolutely not the case. Shoplifting in Illinois will lead you in serious need of an experienced criminal defense attorney. In order to avoid finding yourself in that position, you should understand exactly what retail theft is and how it is punished in our state.

What is Retail Theft?

Generally speaking, what most of us call shoplifting is a type of retail theft. Illinois statute defines retail theft as one of the following actions:

• Takes merchandise with the intent of keeping it or depriving the merchant of it permanently without paying for the merchandise;
• Alters or removes a price tag or similar marking in an attempt to pay less for a piece of merchandise;

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 Posted on February 05, 2015 in Criminal Defense

The old saying goes that close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Well, close can also count in criminal law. While committing a criminal offense can land you in hot water, you may not realize that mere attempts to commit a criminal offense can also land you in jail for almost as long – an attempt to commit a crime is a crime.

What Counts as an Attempt?

In common language an “attempt” occurs whenever you try to do something. Fortunately, the legal definition of “attempt” is a little bit stricter than that. Illinois defines attempt in its statutes. According to Illinois law a person is guilty of attempting to commit an offense when he or she (1) does any act that is a “substantial step” toward the commission of the offense while (2) having the intent to commit that specific offense. Now, that does not mean that one has to sit down and think to him or herself, “I would like to go out today and commit a burglary.” The intent requirement does not mean that you have to know what the offense you intend to commit is called—it only means that you have to intend to commit it. That clears up the intent, but the question remains: what is a substantial step?

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