Will this be another oops? Illinois trials to be televised?

From the Chicago Tribune:
Illinois trials may soon be televised

The Illinois Supreme Court is promulgating rules that will allow a more open courtroom by allowing court proceedings to be televised. While this change is meant to be positive, as with many governmental "advances", this may actually create complex problems down the road. The article notes the possibility that witnesses may feel uncomfortable coming forward, and that's a valid problem, but it's only the tip of the iceberg.

Illinois has laws allowing expungement or sealing of case information in many types of cases where defendants are found not guilty or the case is dismissed, and even in some felony matters resulting in conviction. Once a Court orders a case sealed or expunged, the information about the case is sealed or even destroyed. A potential employer, for instance, would not be able to see information about that case.

What's the point?

What about visual search? Never heard of visual search? If not, you will. It's a technology in its toddling stages, well past infancy. Go ahead and do a Google search for "Visual Search" and as of this moment, you'll find some 30,500,000 results. You plug in your image or photo and the search engine looks for related material. And facial recognition software? It's here now. Apple's iPhone and iPad? There's an app for that. Motorola's Xoom comes with facial recognition built in.

So you beat a criminal charge at trial and go through the process of expungement all with help from your local highly qualified Illinois Criminal defense attorneys, but guess what? Your trial was televised! And some soul with more time than tact uploaded a copy of the video to, where else, YouTube. So when you pop in for your job interview, your interviewer snaps a photo, uploads it to the Google of visual search (which will probably be Google) and presto chango - Illinois' expungement law is circumvented.

I can't help but wonder if this was considered by the Illinois Supreme Court? What do you think?

Search and Siezure - Landmark case from SCOTUS

It isn't often a landmark case on the issue of search and siezure comes down from the Supreme Court on the side of the defense, but that's just what happened Monday in the case of Arizona v Gant.

In case after case, and certainly in many Illinois DUI arrests, officers freely search the vehicle of the suspect in custody without regard to any Constitutional considerations, and some of those DUI cases become Illinois criminal defense matters as well. The old rule was fairly put as - if you are under arrest, your car is subject to search under the theoretical need of the officer to secure the scene and maintain "officer safety". In other words, if you were in cuffs in the back of the squad car, the officer could make sure there wasn't a knife or gun in the glove compartment so that you couldn't exit the locked squad car, uncuff yourself, knock the officer over the head, grab the gun and shoot him. Obviously a very likely scenario.

The new rule makes more sense. When the police arrest someone in a vehicle, the officer can search the vehicle only under one of two circumstances. In very basic terms, those two circumstances are:

• The suspect might in some way gain access to the vehicle; or
• The officer is searching for evidence related to the reason for the arrest.

Other than that, searching a vehicle is a non-starter. In Arizona v Gant, the police arrested Gant for driving with a suspended license, and promptly locked him safely away in handcuffs in the back of their squad car. They then rifled through his car and found cocaine in a jacket on the seat of the vehicle, and charged him with possession of a controlled substance. The Supreme Court acted to protect the sanctity of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and to protect you.
What do you think about Arizona v Gant?