| On December 19, 2010, Chicago police arrested 17-year-old Jamal Streeter and charged him with aggravated unlawful use of a firearm.
On April 15, 2011, Streeter pled guilty to the charge in Cook County Circuit Court. He was sentenced to one year in prison. He was released on June 19, 2011.
In September 2013, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled in People v. Aguilar that the portion of the statute under which Streeter had been convicted was unconstitutional. The statute said that a person committed the offense of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon when a person “carries on or about his person or in any vehicle or concealed on or about his person except when on his land or in his abode or fixed place of business any pistol, revolver, stun gun or taser or other firearm and the firearm is uncased, loaded and immediately accessible.”
The court held that this portion of the statute violated the right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment.
In 2020, attorney Joel Flaxman filed a motion to vacate Streeter’s gun possession conviction based on the Aguilar ruling. By that time, Streeter was serving a 40-year prison sentence after being convicted of a murder in Chicago that occurred on August 3, 2011—less than two months after Streeter had been released on parole on the gun possession conviction.
On February 25, 2020, Streeter’s gun possession conviction was vacated, and the charge was dismissed. On December 2, 2020, Chief Criminal Court Judge Leroy Martin Jr. granted Streeter a certificate of innocence.
Streeter then filed a claim with the Illinois Court of Claims seeking compensation. He was awarded $36,000.
– Maurice Possley
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