Lake County Criminal Defense Law Blog

A landmark Supreme Court ruling last month has struck down national law enforcement's efforts to track citizens using GPS technology without properly obtaining search warrants to do so.

The court ruled that GPS tracking devices can only be installed on criminal suspects' vehicles if a warrant has been issued for the criminal investigation. Police in a variety of jurisdictions had been surreptitiously tagging vehicles in an attempt to track the movement of criminal suspects. The justices asserted that tracking without a warrant constituted an illegal search.

Three decades ago, Chicago mobsters Arthur Rachel and Joseph Scalise were convicted and sentenced to serve 14 years in a British prison for stealing the Marlborough Diamond from a store in London. The 45-carat diamond has yet to be recovered.

After their prison release, the two allegedly reunited back in Chicago to plan other heists at banks and jewelry stores, according to federal authorities. The mobsters and another accomplice were later charged with conspiracy and racketeering, both federal crimes, after authorities discovered that the individuals were plotting to rob an armored car.

Last week, Scalise and the other accomplice both pleaded guilty to the charges. However, Rachel, who is now 73 years old, pleaded not guilty which prompted his case to go to trial. On Thursday, he was convicted of three of the four counts filed against him in the federal criminal case.

In a case currently being reviewed in U.S. District Court, prosecutors are seeking to obtain a court order that would require an individual who is accused of bank fraud, which is a federal crime, to disclose a password so that they can have access to the defendant's encrypted computer. Prosecutors believe that the computer contains important evidence to support their case against the suspect. The defendant and her attorneys, however, strongly argue that compelling her to do so would violate her rights under the Fifth Amendment, as well as her right to privacy.

The woman is denying the federal charges that have been filed against her regarding a mortgage scam. The bank fraud investigation, which led to the current criminal trial, culminated in authorities seizing six computers from the defendant's residence. Information from five of the computers was easily accessible, but due to the use of a widely available encryption program using password protection, information on one laptop remains inaccessible.

Modernizing its definition of rape, the FBI now includes men as victims of the serious crime. The crime statistics gathered and reported by the federal agency will also acknowledge that individuals are victims of rape even if they did not put up a physical struggle to resist the attack. Rape victims may not need to physically resist an attack under circumstances where an attacker is significantly stronger, or armed with a knife or gun, which could make physical resistance dangerous and deadly.

The agency will also count instances in which an individual is unable to consent to sex as a result of being under the influence of alcohol or drugs as rape or instances in which an individual is not old enough to consent to sex as rape. In many ways, the FBI's update to its definition of rape, which has not been changed for approximately 80 years, merely catches up with the majority of current Illinois state and federal laws.