Carpenter v. United States has opened new protections from disclosure of electronic data under the Fourth Amendment. However, Illinois courts have moved cautiously in this new frontier.
The Illinois Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Confidentiality Act sets out protections and procedures that lawyers must heed before attempting to access a person’s mental health records.
On Aug. 21, 2023, the Third District of the Illinois Appellate Court held that barring a necessity defense does not necessarily deny the defendant a fair trial in a criminal case.
A former member of the Illinois Supreme Court Committee on Illinois Evidence reviews its 2013 proposals for rules of evidence not adopted by the Supreme Court.
On Jan. 20, 2023, the Second District of the Illinois Appellate Court held that an arresting officer’s official reports were admitted into evidence once they were filed, although the defendant neither stipulated nor chose to utilize the reports in his case.
On Dec. 16, 2022, the First District of the Illinois Appellate Court held that a firearm found on a defendant during a Terry search, after the defendant was observed by officers adjusting his waistband and stating he dropped a bag of cannabis, must be suppressed.
This Act amends The Expressway Camera Act by modifying the circumstances under which footage from cameras on expressways and Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable Lake Shore Drive in Cook County may be extracted.
On July 29, 2022, the Fourth District of the Illinois Appellate Court held that a brief refusal to put one’s foot in a squad car did not materially impede an officer’s job performance to support a conviction of resisting or obstructing a peace officer.
On Mar. 31, 2022, the Second District of the Illinois Appellate Court held that failure to object to hearsay evidence did not constitute ineffective assistance of counsel when it would have been admitted through a hearsay exception.
On Jan. 21, 2022, the Illinois Supreme Court held that a prosecutor did not impermissibly shift the burden of proof to the defendant when the prosecutor said in rebuttal closing argument that the defendant could have requested evidence testing.
On June 11, 2021, the Fifth District of the Illinois Appellate Court held that a new trial is warranted because the state impermissibly used the defendant’s other bad acts as substantive evidence of the defendant’s guilt.
Although familial DNA database searches have been used as a law-enforcement aid across the U.S., these searches have yet to be scrutinized by many courts, including in Illinois.
The defendant argued the trial court abused its discretion when it allowed prosecutors to play a voicemail recording of the victim during his cross-examination.
The advent of smartphones containing audio and video capabilities gives virtually everyone the means to preserve evidence. But before you get to the question of whether the recording is authentic, you first need to be sure it was legally made.
Unclear Seventh Circuit precedent and conflicting district court opinions have left unresolved whether corporate financial information is discoverable in relation to a punitive-damages claim in federal court.
On Sept. 28, 2018, the First District Appellate Court of Illinois held that a defendant raising a freestanding actual innocence challenge after previously entering a guilty plea must present a truly persuasive demonstration of innocence in the form of compelling evidence.
