Labor Day is a national tribute to the contributions that workers routinely make to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country. Historical significance aside, for many Lake County and Porter County residents, Labor Day signals the end of summer; and what better way to celebrate the end of summer than with festivities revolving around friends and family?

Avoid a Porter County DUI or a Lake County DUI This Labor Day

While moderation is always the best policy, many Lake County and Porter County residents will overindulge in the consumption of alcohol this weekend, resulting in unwanted charges of operating while intoxicated (OWI); formerly known as driving under the influence (DUI).

In fact, police throughout Lake County, Indiana and Porter County, Indiana are cracking down on impaired driving during this holiday weekend by conducting field sobriety checkpoints and setting up road blocks to catch impaired drivers. The sobering reality is that an OWI or DUI conviction can cause irreparable harm to not only your reputation, but also your livelihood.

Don’t allow yourself to be a victim of the Labor Day Blues. Porter County DUI’s and Lake County DUI’s are very serious business. You could spend significant time in jail.  You could end up with a felony conviction on your record.  You could end up performing countless hours of community service.  You need an experienced Porter County OWI lawyer or an experienced Lake County OWI lawyer who can defend you. SFT Lawyers has experienced Lake and Porter County DUI lawyers who can assist you.  Call TODAY for a FREE CONSULTATION!  (219) 841-5683.

We all have mothers of all shapes, sizes, and demeanors.  You remember your mother from childhood as either sweet, nurturing, and caring,  as the face of wrath of whatever higher power you believe in, or both.  Regardless of what you think your mother was or what a mother should be, it is never a good idea to lie to your mother. Mothers have a sixth sense of when children (of any age) are lying to them.  You might face a variety of consequences for lying to your mother, even as an adult; however, the consequences for lying to your Porter County criminal defense attorney can be far worse. Here are six (6) of many reasons you should consider telling your Porter County Defense Attorney the truth:

1. Your Porter County Criminal Defense Attorney is Less Likely to Believe You

Your mother is probably well-educated in the school of hard knocks. She has been around, and probably experienced all types of situations that prepare her for a job as a human lie detector.  Your Porter County criminal defense attorney is no different. He or she has experienced literally thousands of cases just like yours, and has had clients just as yourself sit in front of him/her and listen to all sorts of lies. He or she has probably heard every lie you could imagine, and has seen each one of them play out in real life only to discover the real truth.  It is not likely that your Porter County criminal defense attorney will believe you if you have some work of fiction about the events surrounding what brought you to his or her office.  You might as well save yourself and the Porter County criminal defense attorney time and energy and fess up right from the start.

2. Your Porter County Criminal Defense Attorney Has Heard Your Story Before–and Probably Much Worse

Whatever skeletons you may have hidden, a Porter County criminal defense attorney has heard and/or seen them before.  There is nothing that you could tell your Porter County criminal defense attorney that will shock him or her (assuming that he or she has been out of law school for at least a day), and your story is probably not the most extreme example (unless perhaps you have footage of who actually shot JFK). Your Porter County criminal defense attorney is not there to judge you, and will not even flinch when you tell him or her what you need to say. The best part is–your Porter County criminal defense attorney has taken an oath and obligation NEVER to repeat anything you have told him/her.  It may feel good to get whatever it is off your chest.

3. Mistrust by Your Porter County Criminal Defense Attorney Can be Worse than Your Mother Not Trusting You

There are few things worse than a woman’s scorn, or a mother’s mistrust.  Losing a Porter County criminal defense attorney‘s trust can sometimes lead to more disastrous results, however.  When you lie to your Porter County criminal defense attorney, it starts a domino effect that only leads to negative consequences.  First, if your Porter County criminal defense attorney believes you, he or she will often present your version of the events to the local prosecutor.  If your Porter County criminal defense attorney goes to the local prosecutor and tells your fictional version of what happened, the prosecutor can either choose to believe it or not.  If he or she does believe it, it might lead to a relatively generous plea deal. If he or she does not believe your version of the story, the proposed offer may be more harsh than it may have been originally. If the prosecutor does believe your story, then eventually the proposed plea goes before the judge and/or a pre-sentence investigation is prepared, where the true facts inevitably come out.  If the judge finds that you were not being truthful, he or she could reject the plea agreement and force you to proceed to trial–where you could face the maximum punishment for the same crime that otherwise avoided some or all of the jail time, probation, or community service that could now be at risk.

4. Punishment is Much More Serious than What Your Mother Would Give

We’re obviously not talking about a simple spanking, here.  We’re also not talking simply about silent contempt (that mothers are often known for) or grounding you from your favorite activity.  We are talking about the possibility of restricting your freedom in a very significant way.  You could face any combination of jail time, home detention, probation, and community service, not to mention the fines, fees, and costs of such programs (including incarceration).  The criminal justice system is serious business, and the consequences are much more severe than anything your mother would ever do to you.

5. Your Porter County Criminal Defense Attorney Has Access to Much More Information About You than Your Mother Does

It’s true; your mother probably has traits of a professional interrogator. However, she lacks the ability to verify much of what you tell her.  As discussed above, your Porter County criminal defense attorney has at least the lie detecting skills of a good mother. But your Porter County criminal defense attorney has access to materials that your mother does not–to verify that the information you are telling about the events and yourself are, in fact, true. If he or she spends the time to do a little research with the resources that a criminal attorney typically has at his or her disposal, he or she will find out the truth.

6. Your Mother Will (Should) Care for You No Matter What

Don’t hold this against me, but I will say that most Porter County criminal attorneys care about you to some extent or another.  They may care for a variety of reasons, but most generally care about a positive outcome in your case.  But at the end of the day, the job of the Porter County criminal defense attorney is to simply cushion the blow the criminal justice system can often deliver.  He or she makes his or her living to provide this service, and in some ways is no different than your doctor or your mechanic. Your mother, on the other hand, is stuck with you for life.  Don’t take kindness for weakness when dealing with Porter County criminal defense attorneys; they can be your lifeline or your ankle weight, depending on how you treat them.  Lying is one of the quickest ways to erode this significant advantage.

If you have been charged with committing a criminal offense in Porter County and need a Porter County criminal defense attorney to assist you, SFT Lawyers can help!  CALL TODAY for a FREE CONSULTATION.  (219) 841-5683.

You might think that the information that you post on Facebook is private. You might think that the information that you post on Facebook is public. But if you think that the information you post on Facebook is somewhere in between, it turns out that you are correct. Some information can be obtained and used against you for different purposes without much protection.  Other information may be harder to obtain, and if obtained improperly, may be excluded as evidence.  Let’s take a look at the various issues surrounding the dissemination of information in social media, and how the law deals with them.

The overall theme is that the law is very antiquated when it comes to dealing with social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. This is because the law moves very slowly, while these platforms seem to move at an ever quickening pace.

United States Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts put it aptly:

“[Saying that a search of all data stored on a cell phone is ‘materially indistinguishable’ from searches of these sorts of physical items] is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon.”

Riley v. California (U.S. 2014), p.26

Civil Versus Criminal Matters

First, we must distinguish criminal cases from civil cases.  In criminal matters, the criminal defendant is protected by the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution as well as by Article I, Section XI of the Indiana Constitution.  One of three (3) conditions must exist prior to a search by police officers: a) The police officers must obtain a search warrant, or; b) the suspect ‘consents’ to the search, or; c) probable cause exists to lead the officer to a reasonable suspicion that items subject to the search will contain evidence of specific criminal conduct.  In this article, we are not discussing whether such social media information may be obtained and used in civil matters. We are only dealing, here, with the criminal process of evidence gathering.

A ‘Reasonable’ Expectation of Privacy

In order for your Fourth Amendment (or Art. I, Sec. XI) right to attach, there must be a ‘reasonable expectation’ that the communication is private.  I won’t go into the terms of art or what this means in each case the U.S. Supreme Court has decided, but basically, this means that in order to be protected, the evidence to be collected must be secure enough to give its owner the expectation that it would not be viewable by the general public.  (A good analogy is that if you leave your windows open facing a nearby sidewalk, you probably don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy in those room(s) facing the windows.)

The courts have determined that you do not have a ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ with general public Facebook posts or location identifiers such as check-ins.  (See generally, Shmidt, Lisa A., Social Networking and the Fourth Amendment: Location Tracking on Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, and Vogel, Peter S., Your Fourth Amendment Rights Don’t Apply to Facebook).

However, such a ‘reasonable expectation’ has been found to exist with regard to emails and ‘private’ electronic correspondence.  (See, Ohm, Paul, “Court Rules Email Protected by Fourth Amendment”, and National Public Radio, “Your Digital Trail: Does the Fourth Amendment Protect Us?”)

The Sixth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals ruled in U.S. v. Warshak, 631 F.3d 266 (6th Cir 2010) that emails have a reasonable expectation of privacy and are therefore protected under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, even though they are first shared through internet service providers (ISP’s) prior to reaching the recipient(s). Strangely, however, the Sixth Circuit did not invalidate the actions of the state in the particular case, because the government relied in ‘good faith’ upon the authority granted by  The Stored Communications Act (“SCA”), 18 U.S.C. §§ 2701 et seq.  The Court went on to strike down relevant parts of the Act, reasoning that the Act went too far in allowing the government to obtain emails by subpoena of the prosecuting attorney, rather than by search warrants approved by a court of law based on probable cause.

What Does this Mean for Facebook?

In short, I believe that private messages sent via Facebook would be afforded protections under the Fourth Amendment (and Art. I, Sec. XI of the Indiana Constitution), while status updates, check-ins, and GPS locators would not.  Because private messages enjoy a similar–if not identical–expectation by both the sender and recipient, they would be afforded the same protection as if they were emails.   Therefore, for the government to search your Facebook private messages, I believe a warrant would be required before such evidence could be used in a court of law.

If this has happened to you, and you fear criminal prosecution for information the government has found on Facebook or other social media, please call SFT Lawyers for a FREE CONSULTATION.  Our experienced team of Lake and Porter County criminal defense attorneys can assist you throughout Northwest Indiana.  (219) 841-5683.

READERS PLEASE NOTE: The courts have not yet dealt with this specific issue, and it is unknown what the ‘official’ legal status of such communications is. This article is not a prediction of any outcome of any particular case; this article is intended strictly for entertainment purposes ONLY, and is not intended, nor can it be construed as legal advice. Please seek the advice of a licensed Indiana criminal defense attorney if this or a similar situation has happened to you.

On July 1, 2014, a series of sweeping changes made by the Indiana General Assembly will take effect.  One particular change that is likely to have a dramatic impact in Lake County Criminal Defense and Porter County Criminal Defense is a new classification within the previous “Theft” category; the new law will provide for “Petty Theft” and “Serious Theft“.  (The Indiana criminal code can be found here.)

Which set of Indiana criminal laws to be applied to each case depends on when the Indiana criminal offense was committed.  If the criminal offense was committed prior to July 1, 2014, the old criminal laws will apply.  If the crime was committed after July 1, 2014, the new criminal law will apply.

Under the current law, “Theft” is always charged as a felony regardless of the value of the property allegedly taken.  However, under the new law, if the property allegedly taken has a fair market value of less than $750.00, the prosecuting attorney can only charge a criminal defendant with “Petty Theft“, a Class A Misdemeanor, unless certain enhancements apply.  Enhancements which will allow “Petty Theft” to be charged as a felony include a prior conviction for theft or criminal conversion, as well as if the item allegedly taken is a firearm. Conversely, if the property allegedly taken has a fair market value equal to or more than $750.00, then a criminal defendant can expect to be charged with “Serious Theft“, a Level 6 Felony.

SFT Lawyers are Experienced Lake and Porter County Criminal Defense Attorneys

Regardless of the circumstances, individuals charged with a crime should always seek out the knowledge and expertise of a skilled Lake County criminal defense attorney or a Porter County criminal defense attorney.  If you have been charged with committing a crime in Indiana and are in need of a Porter County criminal defense attorney or a Lake County criminal defense attorney, SFT Lawyers can help. Our Porter County criminal defense attorneys and Lake County criminal defense attorneys have extensive experience defending Lake County and Porter County residents accused of committing a variety of criminal offenses in Indiana.  CALL TODAY for a FREE CONSULTATION.  (219) 841-5683.