| On March 3, 2006, 22-year-old Claudious Williams was arrested in Chicago, Illinois and charged with aggravated unlawful use of a firearm.
On May 4, 2006, Williams pled guilty in Cook County Circuit Court and was sentenced to two years on probation.
In September 2013, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled in People v. Aguilar that the portion of the statute under which Williams 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, Williams, acting without a lawyer, filed a motion to vacate the conviction based on the Aguilar ruling. After the motion was granted on October 1, 2020, Williams’s conviction on the gun charge was vacated, and the case was dismissed. By that time, Williams was serving a 50-year prison sentence after he was convicted of murder in 2018.
Williams then sought a certificate of innocence. On July 21, 2021, the certificate of innocence was granted.
Williams then filed a claim with the Illinois Court of Claims seeking compensation. In December 2021, Williams was awarded $15,000 in compensation.
– Maurice Possley
|