Weapons charge puts crimp in parole

On March 3, 1999, Ryan Baldwin pleaded guilty to murder and received 20 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections.

He was released from Dixon Correctional Center on Jan. 22, 2007. Next year would have marked the end of his three-year parole.

He's not going to make it.

On Thursday morning, Mount Prospect police arrested the 29-year-old Baldwin after a resident of the 900 block of I-Oka reported seeing a suspicious man hanging around one of the houses.

Officers approached Baldwin, whose address is listed as the 1500 block of Fernandez in Arlington Heights, about 9 a.m. and inquired why he was in the neighborhood. He told them he was visiting a friend. When they asked for identification, he went to retrieve his wallet from a place where one doesn't ordinarily keep a wallet, said officer Greg Sill, of the Mount Prospect police department. Officers patted down Baldwin and discovered an unloaded Smith & Wesson .38 special in the waistband of his pants.

They charged Baldwin with unlawful use of a weapon by a felon, a class 3 felony that carries a sentence of two to 10 years. A Cook County judge set his bond at $75,000 Friday. A representative from the state's attorney's office did not return phone calls, but a probation violation will likely be included among the charges, and could impact the length of Baldwin's sentence if he's convicted.

Had he been charged with a class X felony in the murder, Baldwin would have been required to serve 85 percent of his sentence. Instead, he received a day off his sentence for every day served, said an IDOC spokesman. In addition, the spokesman noted that Baldwin had received several months credit for good behavior. That, combined with the 671 days credit for the time he spent awaiting trial in the Cook County Jail, meant Baldwin served a little under 10 years for his crime.