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Article: EDITORIAL: Cracking the criminal code.(Editorial)
- Article from:
- Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL)
- Article date:
- March 16, 2007
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Chicago Tribune. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Mar. 16--The Illinois criminal code looks a lot like grandma's attic: It's stuffed with some important stuff and a whole lot of junk. Good luck locating anything specific in a hurry. Prosecutors face that same kind of mess inside courtrooms, when they're fumbling through criminal law books, trying to track down relevant crimes or sentencing rules. The modern criminal code was just 72 pages when it was written in 1961. Now it would take the Rosetta stone to decipher the code's more than 1,200 pages. Court appearances sometimes have to be continued to give judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys more time to sort through the often conflicting, redundant and ...