Courts
FBI agents took Heather Mack, 26, into custody on her arrival at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Wednesday morning.
The former member of the Illinois House told a federal judge Wednesday that he offered a member of the Illinois Senate monthly payments of $2,500 to support a bill supported by a sweepstakes firm that he worked for as a lobbyist.
Jurors heard starkly different portrayals of Kyle Rittenhouse — instigator or victim — in opening statements at his trial Tuesday on charges of shooting three people on the streets of Kenosha during a turbulent protest against racial injustice.
Heather Mack was released from prison on Friday after serving seven years and two months of a 10-year sentence. Her then-boyfriend, who was also convicted in the killing, was sentenced to 18 years and remains in prison.
A jury was selected in a single day Monday for the homicide trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the young, aspiring police officer who shot three people while they were out on the streets of Kenosha during a protest against racial injustice last year.
The Natural Land Institute filed suit Wednesday in U.S. District Court to stop the Greater Rockford Airport Authority from tearing up the 8,000-year-old Bell Bowl Prairie as part of an airport expansion project.
Mauricio Ramirez, 32, was ordered held on $500,000 bail Thursday after he was charged with criminal sexual assault to a victim between the ages of 13-17 and aggravated criminal sexual abuse of a victim under 18.
Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson is one of three sitting members of the Chicago City Council to be charged with federal crimes.
The hearing was likely the last before Rittenhouse goes on trial Nov. 1 for the shootings during chaotic demonstrations in Kenosha on Aug. 25, 2020, two days after a white police officer in that city shot a Black man, Jacob Blake, in the back while responding to a domestic disturbance.
Milixen Ardon, 24, and Wilfredo Cruz, 43, were each held without bail following their arrests on charges of first-degree murder in the death of Ardon’s 2-year-old daughter Alison Zerais Ardon.
U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber appeared to have wanted the trial in Chicago to begin earlier, but he set it for Aug. 1 after one of R. Kelly’s attorneys, Steven Greenberg, said that he another of Kelly’s attorneys will be in trial on other cases through July.
Thomas Osadzinski, 22, designed a computer code to help the Islamic State bypass programs designed to block the group's propaganda, prosecutors said.
The officer, Michael A. Riley, is accused of tipping off someone who participated in the riot by telling them to remove posts from Facebook that had showed the person inside the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack, according to court documents.
A judge on Friday denied a last-ditch effort to dismiss a criminal case against actor Jussie Smollett, who is accused of lying to police when he reported that he was the victim of a racist, anti-gay attack in downtown Chicago in January 2019.
Federal prosecutors announced charges against five reputed members of the O-Block street gang, accusing them of participating in a criminal organization responsible for murder and of “violently” protecting the gang and its territories on the South Side.
Louis Capriotti, 46, entered a guilty plea Thursday, court records indicate, admitting to leaving what a federal judge had previously described as “very explicit and concerning” voicemails.