Sharone Mitchell News Today

Chicago Sun-Times

Roughly 60% percent of the state's 102 counties do not have a full-time public defender. That needs to change for Illinois to meet its legal obligation to provide criminal defendants with legal counsel.

"The photograph is a statement to remember that Jewish people have a right to defend themselves," per the complaint.The post Illinois public defender sues to display photo with gun, Israeli

Skokie Public Defender Sues To Be Able To Display Photo Holding Rifle - Skokie, IL - Debra Gassman says preventing her from displaying the photograph is a violation of her First Amendment rights.

 

Assistant Public Defender Debra Gassman says her boss' order to remove the photo of her holding a rifle and standing before the Israeli flag violates her First Amendment right to expression.

A longtime Cook County assistant public defender has sued the office, alleging that officials violated her constitutional rights by ordering her to move out of view a photograph of herself posing in front of the Israeli flag holding a gun. Debra Gassman, who has worked for the Cook County public defender’s office since 1997, filed the complaint on Wednesday in federal court in Chicago. It ...

Among the issues facing lawmakers as they return to Springfield this week: whether to extend a measure that increases minimum prison sentences for repeat gun possession offenders.

After more than 770 homicides were recorded in Chicago in 2016, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration pressed Illinois lawmakers to pass a measure that would increase minimum prison sentences for repeat gun possession offenders. The law that legislators ultimately approved took effect in 2018, and was a rare bit of policy common ground for Emanuel and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner. But in ...