Belleville Criminal Defense Blog

We all make mistakes, but many people that have been charged or convicted of a crime find that they pay for those mistakes for the rest of their lives. A criminal record, even one with only minor offenses, can affect your ability to get a job, find housing, get custody of your kids and qualify for student loans. At Madelyn Daley, Attorney at Law, we have helped countless Illinois residents get their criminal records expunged or sealed to give them the opportunity to leave the past behind them and look forward to the future.

When your criminal record is expunged, any record of your arrest or conviction will be erased completely and you will never be required to disclose it. If your record is sealed, your criminal history will still exist legally and physically, but it will not be accessible by the public. In other words, a potential employer would not have access to sealed records.

Defending against a DUI is never easy, but there are many effective strategies used by criminal defense attorneys to protect their clients in court. As a result, many DUI charges are reduced or dropped entirely.

The first DUI defense Illinois attorneys often use relates to the initial traffic stop. In order for an officer to stop a driver, they must have cause to do so. That means that the officer must have reasonable suspicion that the driver has committed, or is about to commit, a crime. The officer may stop a driver for violating a traffic law, driving too fast or too slow, or driving erratically. If the driver was stopped but was not breaking any traffic laws at the time and exhibited no signs of intoxication, the initial stop may have been improper.

Drunk driving crashes come in many tastes and colors, but Illinois accidents that result in serious injury or death are by far the most serious. A driver who is found guilty of one or more crimes involving death or serious injury may face incarceration, a hefty fine and lengthy, if not permanent, loss of driving privileges.

A recent accident on a rural road shows the potential effect of such a sentence. On Oct. 20, a pickup truck being driven by a 20-year-old man from Pinckneyville careened off a rural road in Perry County road and landed in a ditch. When police arrived, they discovered that one of the passengers had suffered serious injuries. The victim, an 18-year-old girl, was flown to a hospital in St. Louis for treatment of her injuries. Her medical status is not yet known.

Many transactions involving illegal drugs cross state lines, with the seller of the drugs travelling to the place where the transaction is intended to occur. For this reason, law enforcement agencies from various states and the federal government often cooperate in the investigation of these operations. A joint operation involving agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the states of Illinois, Kentucky and Missouri recently announced that it had arrested 8 suspects and recovered $700,000 worth of methamphetamine.

The investigation was opened in September by Kentucky law enforcement agencies and the DEA. The investigators identified people in Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and California who were involved in the suspected distribution of crystal meth and marijuana.