Chicago Criminal Lawyer Blog

August 26, 2022

Ending Cash Bail: What Does it Mean?

by Law Offices of David L. Freidberg, P.C.

While the media may have you believing that ending cash bail means allowing anyone charged with a crime to go free, the matter is not so simple or so haphazardly employed.

Imagine if you are charged with a crime you did not commit based on a witness misidentifying you. You don’t think it can happen to you? Well, it can. Now, if you have money, you just pay your way out of jail and wait for the charges to be dropped because the case is not strong enough. But what if you do not have the money to pay for the bail? You then have a choice. You can either plead guilty to the crime to get the matter settled and be on about your life, or you can fight the charges, stay in jail, and hope the system works the way it is supposed to. Since you have little faith in that happening for you, you end up taking a plea deal to get out of jail. In other words, the poor can be leveraged into plea deals simply to avoid being stuck in jail.

Is that fair? Of course, not. While some folks want to make the rules fairer, others are convinced that society would fall apart if we did not leverage the poor into false confessions based on the deprivation of their freedom.

August 24, 2022

Man Claims Parents Allowed Sexual Contact with Teen; Court Does Not Care

by Law Offices of David L. Freidberg, P.C.

A Chicago man is fighting charges in Iowa after he allegedly had sexual contact with a 15-year-old girl. The man claimed that the parents permitted the sexual contact between him and their daughter and thus should not be charged with a crime. However, consent is not a factor in statutory rape cases, and a parent cannot consent on behalf of a child to permit a crime to be committed against them. A judge informed the defendant of this fact and refused to dismiss charges against him related to unlawful sexual contact.

Age of Consent: How Does it Work?

The vast majority of states do not have a single age of consent but rather age differentials that are considered unlawful. Iowa has an age of consent of 16 which means that anyone over the age of 16 can consent to sex. This girl was 15. However, Iowa’s minimum age is 14 which means that an individual who is 14 years of age or older can consent to have sex with anyone who is within four years of their age. In this case, the defendant was 27 at the time of the alleged unlawful sexual contact, so the statute would not apply to him and the charges would still be actionable.

August 19, 2022

FBI Announces Major Sex Trafficking Sting

by Law Offices of David L. Freidberg, P.C.

The FBI announced an operation to break up a major human trafficking ring. The bust resulted in the liberation of 84 minors, 37 of whom were actively missing children. The average age of the minors was 15 years old, but there were some as young as 11. 141 adults were also among those liberated by police. Authorities have identified 85 suspects accused of involvement in human sex trafficking.

The operation included more than 200 local police departments across the country, FBI specialists including intelligence analysts and forensic interviewers. The partnership included National Center for Missing or Exploited Children (NCMEC). 391 operations were conducted over the course of a two-week period.

More than half of human trafficking victims are minors. More than half of all human trafficking victims were approached on social media sites, dating sites, and online.

August 17, 2022

Serial Scooter Groper Charged with Sexual Assault

by Law Offices of David L. Freidberg, P.C.

Two victims and a coworker have positively identified a man that they say groped them without their consent while riding by on a motorized scooter. The man now faces multiple accounts of aggravated battery, aggravated criminal sexual abuse, and criminal sexual assault. An image of the man had been circulated since August 6. The man was linked to four separate groping incidents, three of which occurred on August 4. The man allegedly groped the buttocks or genitals of women on the street before fleeing the scene. In at least one case, a victim said that there was sexual penetration. The case broke when an image of the man was distributed to the public. A former coworker was the one to identify the suspect.

The suspect has since admitted to groping the women because they were all “wearing something hot.”

Why Did He Think This Was Okay Behavior?

August 12, 2022

What Does a Woke Policing Model Look Like

by Law Offices of David L. Freidberg, P.C.

Are you woke? Are your kids woke? Is it good to be woke? Where does ‘woke’ come from? How do I become woke if I’m not already? What are these kids on about?

Woke is a new front of the culture war and it is essentially a type of rebranded identity politics that criticizes some of the structural problems with governance and policing. While it has serious marketing problems due in large part to troll armies and bad marketing, there are a lot of ideas that need to be looked at and even if they are discarded, being more aware of the problems and learning how to self-crit like these woke people do is not necessarily a bad thing.

In this article, we will take a look at some of the woke reforms that have the Boomers up in arms.

August 10, 2022

Chicago Sets Records for Homicides, Record Low Number of Arrests

by Law Offices of David L. Freidberg, P.C.

In 2021, Chicago set a 25-year record for the number of reported homicides. In 2022, Chicago police are being chastised for making a record low number of arrests. According to recent data, arrests have been made in only 12% of reported cases which is the lowest number since the statistics were first recorded in 2001. Additionally, murders are up a reported 3% since 2020 and sexual assaults have climbed 27%.

What’s going on? Well, the answer, predictably, falls along political lines. Conservatives want to blame “woke reforms” for the lack of arrests while “woke reformers” are blaming the police for “malicious compliance” with newer policies aimed at reducing police interactions.

Going Out There and Not Doing Anything

August 5, 2022

School Teacher Gets 50 Years for Sexual Exploitation of a Minor

by Law Offices of David L. Freidberg, P.C.

Allegations against this teacher were reported as early as 2019 when he still worked in the Chicago public schools. The teacher was accused of inappropriately touching the buttocks of a female student who then reported the incident to her mother and the two went to the principal. The behavior occurred on more than one occasion. The girl’s brother reported similar conduct as did two of his classmates.

Prosecutors did pursue misdemeanor charges against the teacher who was later found not guilty in a bench trial. The teacher continued to teach Spanish to third graders when he was arrested for the sexual exploitation of a 12-year-old in Indiana.

According to the allegations, he arranged to meet a 12-year-old boy who he spoke to online and met the boy at a hotel where he molested the boy and recorded the encounter. After the incident, police recovered the teacher’s phone where they found another incident of inappropriate sexual contact with a minor. The other victim was an Illinois resident who was 15 at the time of the assault.

August 4, 2022

Man Arrested for Selling and Possession of Automatic Handguns

by Law Offices of David L. Freidberg, P.C.

Illinois makes it illegal to own automatic weapons in the state. While in other states, you can own certain classes of automatic weapons, Illinois is not among the states that allow such a weapon within its borders. Further, you cannot take a handgun and then refurbish it to fire multiple rounds with a single trigger pull. Lastly, you cannot own a weapon if you have been convicted of certain felonies.

Now, one man is accused of breaking all three laws after selling a modified Glock to an informant. He has been charged with unlawful possession of a weapon by a convicted felon, modifying a Glock, and illegal possession of a weapon in the State of Illinois.

To be certain, a modified Glock capable of shooting multiple rounds with a single trigger depression is not legal anywhere in the United States, including Texas where automatic weapons can be owned and purchased so long as they meet specific criteria.

July 29, 2022

ShotSpotter Official Refuses to Release Documents in Criminal Case

by Law Offices of David L. Freidberg, P.C.

ShotSpotter is a technology that aims at reporting gunshots to police officers (Was ShotSpotter involved in the death of Adam Toledo?) However, the technology has been manipulated by ShotSpotter employees to help cops leverage probable cause in cases where they would not otherwise have it. In fact, this constitutes a fraud on the public, the defendant, the court, and society at large. Rather than release documents during a trial, a ShotSpotter spokesperson took the unusual measure of asking the court to hold the company in contempt rather than release documents that would show that the company perpetrated a fraud against the citizens of Chicago.

What is ShotSpotter and How Does it Work?

Ostensibly, ShotSpotter technology places audio devices around the city which then trigger alarms if they hear a noise that is loud, like a gunshot. The report could give police probable cause to stop individuals in the area. However, evidence has shown that shot spotter employees manipulated reports ex post facto to establish that a gunshot came from a specific location in order to give police probable cause to initiate detentions.

July 27, 2022

Man Charged With Felony Hate Crime Against Gay-Friendly Bakery

by Law Offices of David L. Freidberg, P.C.

An Illinois man has been charged with a felony hate crime after attacking an LGBTQ-friendly bakery. The bakery sparked controversy after announcing a “family-friendly drag show” online. The threats and vandalism forced the bakery to cancel the show. Now, a 24-year-old Illinois man is facing felony charges related to vandalism plus the hate crime intensifier. The man, along with others, is accused of leaving feces on the doorstep, harassing employees, and making in-person and online threats. He also inspired a group of people to join in. Those people left a sign outside the business that said, “pedophiles work here.”

The man accused of vandalizing the bakery was caught in the act. A local resident saw him breaking windows and spray-painting messages that police described as hateful. After the incident, the bakery reported that they would cancel the drag show over safety concerns of the performers.

What is Going on Here?