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New Law for 2014 to Raise Speed Limits
In August of 2013, Governor Pat Quinn signed a new law that will increase the speed limit to 70 miles per hour for some highways in Illinois. Illinois is the 35th state to increase their speed limits to 70 mph. The law allows eight counties to opt-out depending on their local safety concerns. The eight counties are Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, Madison, McHenry, St. Clair and Will.
Quinn approved the new law saying that “this limited 5 miles per hour increase will bring Illinois’ rural interstate speed limits in line with our neighbors’ and the majority of states across America, while preventing an increase in excessive speeding.” The law also amended the previous definition of “excessive” from 31 mph over the speed limit to 26 mph over.
Quinn took the summer to consider the bill and decided that it was good for commerce and the drivers of Illinois. Political support is also clear as the law passed 85 to 30 in the House and 41 to 6 in the Senate. But there are many detractors to the new law including state police, roadway safety organizations, and the Illinois Department of Transportation.
Man Exonerated for Crime Sues Lake County Police
By the time that Juan Rivera was taken into custody, the trail to find the killer of eleven year old Holly Staker had gone cold. The girl had been raped and stabbed in Waukegan while babysitting for two children in the summer of 1992. The Lake County Police Department had followed up on more than 600 leads to find the killer when they questioned the then 19 year old Juan Rivera for the second time. He had originally stated that he was at a nearby party around the time of the crime.
Incongruities in his story lead the police to aggressively interrogate the man with a 9th grade education and psychological problems. For up to four days, Rivera was subjected to almost constant questioning. After banging his head against his cell, pulling out his hair and being restrained by handcuffs and leg shackles, he confessed to the murder in graphic detail. His admission of guilt was the centerpiece in the case against him.
Rivera was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of the crimes in 1993. In 1996, an appellate court reversed the decision based on errors in the trial and demanded a new trial. By 1998, Rivera was retried and sentenced to life again. This time the appellate court did not overturn the decision. It was only in 2006, when DNA tests confirmed that the semen was not Rivera’s that a third trial was ordered by the sentencing judge. After being found guilty for the third time, an appeal in 2011 allowed Rivera to be exonerated and released in 2012.
Imperial Insane Vice Lords Gang Members Busted
There’s been no shortage of stories involving murder and violence coming out of Chicago in recent years, but rarely do the people at the top, oftentimes more responsible for the violence than anyone else, get caught. In mid-October, however, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, police apprehended 33 people who are now facing drug conspiracy charges, including the head of the Imperial Insane Vice Lords Nathaniel Hoskins. Hoskins and his family, reports the Sun-Times, actually lived in Las Vegas at the time of his arrest, “but the reputed gang leader micromanaged drug spots in his hometown of Chicago and even ordered a murder in 2011, prosecutors said.” According to the Sun-Times, the Imperial Insane Vice Lords have a stronghold on the city’s West Side, “but also operated a drug spot in Wicker Park near North and Damen.”
There were nine other defendants in court alongside Hoskins that have been formally charged with racketeering. These were in addition to 14 others “ranging in age from 21 to 52 also… charged federally with conspiracy to distribute heroin.” An additional nine alleged gang members were charged in a Cook County criminal court. Police told the Sun-Times that Hoskins kept a close eye on the 250 gang members he “employed” in Chicago, even though he was 1,700 miles away. He has been accused of “dabbling in illegal pharmaceutical sales in Nevada too,” police told the Sun-Times.
Man Commits Murder Over Pot Plant
Christopher Shoji, 25, of North Center, was charged with murder and misdemeanor cannabis production, after allegedly stabbing his best friend to death in an incident involving an argument over a marijuana plant, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The incident occurred outside a mutual friend’s basement apartment late on a Monday night, reports the Sun-Times, and immediately following the stabbing Shoji “ran to his mother’s house, pulled out the 4-to-5-foot long illegal plant, came back to the friend’s apartment and hid in her closet with the pot where police found him,” Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Latoya Croswell told the Sun-Times. He had allegedly already admitted his crime to the friend in whose closet he was hiding.
Solomon Morales and Shoji had been best friends for years, a fact which Archimides Morales, brother of the deceased, told the Sun-Times was “the worst part about it. We saw [Shoji] all the time. We always had him at our house for dinner and to drink… I gave Chris the clothes off my back…. he was family.” Attorney Croswell said that Shoji had told her that he was frightened of Morales, afraid that he was going to ”snitch” about the pot plant, which prosecutors have taken as a motive in the case. Morales didn’t die at the scene of the crime, however. He “died at the Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where his family took him after he was able to walk home, leaving a trail of blood from his friend’s home,” reports the Sun-Times.
Attorney General Urges Change in Sentencing Laws
At a conference at the American Bar Association in San Francisco, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder plans for the federal government to scale back stiff sentences for some drug crimes and divert low-level offenders to drug treatment and community service programs. “We cannot simply prosecute or incarcerate our way to becoming a safer nation,” he said.
A recent editorial in the Chicago Sun-Times said that the change in sentencing laws is a welcome reform for an overused and overburdened federal prison system. For decades, mandatory minimum sentencing, although politically popular, often times disallowed the court to look at the individual defendant and the individual case to decide if there were extenuating circumstances that led to the commission of the crime.
In a statement regarding the Attorney General’s announcement, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said, “The mandatory minimum sentence policy has led to severe overcrowding in our prison system and swelled taxpayer spending on incarceration and detention.”
Online Sex Crimes to be Prosecuted Offline
According to a recent story on Foxillinois.com, Attorney General Lisa Madigan has proposed that sex crimes committed online be prosecuted locally. She is asking that Congress amend the Communications Decency Act, which was put into place in 1989 to fight sex crimes on the internet. It is reported that the internet has perpetuated an increase in sex trafficking. At present, the prosecutor's office does not have the authority to go after a suspect if the crime is committed in Illinois.
If this proposal were granted it would be a big deal in the fight against sex crimes as a whole. It would mean that once an online sex crime was committed in Illinois the local authorities will have the authority to go after the suspect. Presently, prosecuting these types of crimes falls under the jurisdiction of the federal government. However, Attorney General Madigan and other supporters of her proposal feel that online sex crimes committed in Illinois should be handled by local authorities.
Judge’s Son Convicted of Drug and Weapon Charges
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Federal Officials Charge 22 in North Dakota with Conspiracy to Sell Heroin
Drug problems tend to publicized and better known in large cities across the U.S. and throughout the world. Everywhere, though, has problems with illegal drugs, including Fargo, North Dakota.
Other drugs, along with heroin, were transported to Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota from around the country where they were prepared to be sold. Twenty two people were charged with conspiracy to sell heroin and other drugs in early July.
The charges began in March when the first indictment of the investigation, nicknamed “Operation Winter’s End,” was filed.
Williston, N.D. is the quickest growing metro area in the country, located in the northwestern corner of the state, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Unfortunately, organized crime and other illegal activities, such as drug activities, are also increasing as the population does, reported law enforcement from the area.
The law enforcement officials from the area and from the federal level are cracking down quickly on the recent outbreak of illegal activity before it becomes a larger problem, however. Police efforts have increased in the oil country and FBI agents have been posted in Minot and Bismarck, along with a Bureau of Alcohol and Tobacco and Firearms agent, also in Bismarck.
Breathalyzers
When someone is pulled over for suspected drunk driving, police officers often use a breathalyzer to check the blood alcohol content (BAC) of the driver. The legal limit for BAC is currently 0.08. If a driver is operating a vehicle with a BAC of 0.08 or higher, that is considered driving drunk, is illegal and could lead to a lot of trouble for the driver.
Many people learn this information in their drivers’ education classes. What people do not know, however, is how a Breathalyzer can determine the amount of alcohol in a person’s blood just from testing their breath.
Although the best way to determine the BAC of a potentially drunk driver is to test their blood, it is very impractical to have to take a blood sample back to a lab to test it, then find the driver again to punish him or her. Craig Freudenrich, Ph.D. said that is was Dr. Robert Borkenstein from the Indiana State Police that invented the first Breathalyzer in 1954.
Breathalyzers work to determine BAC because alcohol that is consumed and taken into the bloodstream is also absorbed into the mouth, throat, stomach and intestines. As the blood goes through the lungs, some of the alcohol from the blood passes across small air sacs in the lungs, and into the air, which is then exhaled out and into a Breathalyzer.
White Collar Crimes
Often times, when thinking of crimes, things like theft, arson, and destruction of property come to mind. There is, however, an entire category of crime that does not involve any violence, called white collar crime. Typically, these crimes involve dishonesty on a large scale often in business. Entrepreneurs and other business professionals are usually the types of people who commit white collar crimes. Because of the broad range of crimes that fall under white collar crime, it is hard to define what it is, but most states have laws that cover all white collar crime so that criminals cannot get around the law. One type of white collar crime that is more commonly heard of is securities fraud. There is a statute that covers all behaviors involving securities fraud, so long as the illegal behavior can be proven. If someone is accused of securities fraud, it must be proven that they acted willfully, not under order of someone else that may have forced them to break the law. The penalties for this could potentially be criminal and also civil. When someone commits securities fraud, there are two categories that the crime can fall under.- One form is when someone sells securities to investors for an amount that is substantially higher than the true value, such as shares of a company for a much higher price than what the company is worth. This can be discovered rather easily because prices can be easily compared online, over the phone or in person.
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