Criminal Law

State Supreme Court narrows probable-cause grounds in pot case

Posted on July 21, 2008
Law-enforcement officers who detect the odor of marijuana from a vehicle can't arrest all of the occupants, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday. In a unanimous ruling, the court determined the smell of pot isn't enough probable cause to warrant...

Spying uncovered Documents show state police monitored peace and anti-death penalty groups

Posted on July 21, 2008
Undercover Maryland State Police officers repeatedly spied on peace activists and anti-death penalty groups in recent years and entered the names of some in a law-enforcement database of people thought to be terrorists or drug traffickers, newly released documents show...

Debra A Livingston Paul J. Kellner Professor of Law

Posted on July 20, 2008
Judge Livingston was appointed United States Circuit Judge for the Second Circuit on May 17, 2007 and entered on duty June 1, 2007. Prior to her appointment she was the Paul J. Kellner Professor of Law at Columbia Law School,...

U.S. blasts jail conditions

Posted on July 19, 2008
Sheriff calls 98 pages of criticism 'unprofessional,' defends reform program In a scathing report released Thursday, federal authorities said that a culture exists at Cook County Jail in which inmates are systematically beaten by guards and medical care is so...

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Third Circuit Strikes Down Statute Criminalizing Visual Depictions of Animal Cruelty

Posted on July 19, 2008
In a 10-3 decision, the en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that a federal statute criminalizing visual depictions of animal cruelty violates the First Amendment. The law in question, 18 U.S.C. sec. 48 states: (a)...

Facebook Becomes a Source of Evidence

Posted on July 19, 2008
Two weeks after Joshua Lipton was charged in a drunken driving crash that seriously injured a woman, the 20-year-old college junior attended a Halloween party dressed as a prisoner. Pictures from the party showed him in a black-and-white striped shirt...

Ex-Diplomat Asserts Cultural Claim for Child Sex Sentence Reduction

Posted on July 19, 2008
An ex-diplomat convicted of having sex with teenage girls in the Congo and Brazil and taping the encounters is asking a judge for leniency, claiming that cultural differences in those countries make sex with girls more acceptable. Gons G. Nachman,...

Pardon-Seekers Look to the President at End of Term

Posted on July 19, 2008
Felons are asking President Bush for pardons and commutations at historic levels as he nears his final months in office, a time when many other presidents have granted a flurry of clemency requests. Among the petitioners is Michael Milken, the...

The Exclusionary Rule as the American Exception

Posted on July 19, 2008
Bradley Harrison was driving a rented Dodge Durango from Vancouver to Toronto in the fall of 2004 with 77 pounds of cocaine in the trunk when a police officer pulled him over, found the drugs and arrested him. A year...

The Right to Counsel in Criminal Cases, A National Crisis

Posted on July 18, 2008
Two years ago, on the fortieth anniversary of Gideon v. Wainwright partnership -- funded by several organizations -- to consider the way in which the Sixth Amendment right to counsel actually functions in criminal cases throughout the United States. The...

The Right to Counsel in Criminal Cases, A National Crisis

Posted on July 18, 2008

Michigan Ranks 44th in the Nation for Public Defense Spending; So-called called "McJustice" System Puts Communities at Risk

Posted on July 18, 2008
Lansing, Michigan - Michigan ranks 44th in the nation for public defense spending, behind Alabama and Georgia, spending only $7.35 per capita, according to a report released today by the National Legal Aid & Defender Association (NLADA). "A Race to...

Two years of freedom, after 23 years behind bars

Posted on July 18, 2008
After serving 23 years in Missouri prison for a rape he didn?t commit, Johnny Briscoe was exonerated on July 19, 2006. Saturday marks the second anniversary of his exoneration. Briscoe?s case highlights the unreliability of eyewitness identification. When a line-up...

'First 48' airs confession, draws criticism from Lester guardian

Posted on July 17, 2008
In an interrogation aired on national television Tuesday night, Lt. Toney Armstrong of the Memphis Police Department drew a confession from 33-year-old Jessie Dotson for the Lester Street mass murder. The confession came at the end of an hourlong episode...

As California looks to expand death row, a flap over where to build it

Posted on July 17, 2008
San Quentin, Calif. - If Methodist pastor Liza Klein had her way, no one would be executed in the US again. But for the moment, she has another goal: keeping California's death row in her own backyard. Despite the estimated...

City launches effort to curb killings

Posted on July 17, 2008
ST. LOUIS ? Sitting on the front steps of her home watching her 5-year-old son play in the summer heat, Sheronda Glover had no idea why Academy Avenue suddenly filled with squad cars, police officers and news crews. Glover, 30,...

JonBenet toxic gossip was in itself a true crime

Posted on July 16, 2008
We were all so sure. Weren't we? We were certain. It was a slam dunk. We knew. Everybody knew. Anybody who doubted it?anybody who hesitated, even briefly, to pronounce that strangely furtive family guilty, to wonder why the cops didn't...

Former Assistant AG Winds Up on Feds' Terror Watch List

Posted on July 16, 2008
The Justice Department's former top criminal prosecutor says the U.S. government's terror watch list likely has caused thousands of innocent Americans to be questioned, searched or otherwise hassled. Former Assistant Attorney General Jim Robinson would know: he is one of...

Reaching out from death row

Posted on July 16, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO -- -- From the forbidding, steely confines of San Quentin Prison's death row, scores of California's most notorious convicts have been reaching out to the free world via the Internet. Scott Peterson's Web page features smiling photos of...

Petition for certiorari in U.S. v. Joseph Hirko raises important double jeopardy and criminal collateral estoppel issues

Posted on July 15, 2008
[Max Huffman] This is a copy of the petition for certiorari in U.S. v. Joseph Hirko, which raises important double jeopardy and criminal collateral estoppel issues. The petition asks the Court to review a 5th Circuit decision holding that after...

Juvenile Justice Some changes would improve legislation in the Senate

Posted on July 15, 2008
SINCE 1974, federal law has required that juveniles picked up for breaking the law be kept separate from alleged adult offenders -- and for good reason. Juveniles held in adult facilities are more likely to be attacked, more likely to...

denver and the west Report: Police use of force improved

Posted on July 15, 2008
two-year independent study of the Denver Police Department's use of deadly force has found that the department has made great strides since the controversial shootings of Frank Lobato and Paul Childs but still has some work to do. The report...

Candidates' views differ on detainee policy

Posted on July 14, 2008
For months now, John McCain and Barack Obama have peppered their campaign speeches with pledges to close the Guantánamo Bay prison camps. Both have cast the detention center as harmful to U.S. foreign policy and a source of international alienation.....

INTERPRETING AFTER THE LARGEST ICE RAID IN US HISTORY

Posted on July 14, 2008
A PERSONAL ACCOUNT Erik Camayd-Freixas, Ph.D. Florida International University June 13, 2008 On Monday, May 12, 2008, at 10:00 a.m., in an operation involving some 900 agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed a raid of Agriprocessors Inc, the nation's...

State Supreme Court weighs parole for killers

Posted on July 14, 2008
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-killer13-2008jul13,0,5539331.story From the Los Angeles Times Questions before the justices: When can a killer reenter society? How much authority should a governor have? Does a model prison record atone for a horrendous crime? By Michael Rothfeld Los Angeles Times Staff...

Arnold H. Loewy, professor of criminal law at Texas Tech University College of Law

Posted on July 13, 2008
He recently stated in an opinion page that the "Death penalty should not be applied to cases of child sexual assault" http://lubbockonline.com/stories/071208/edi_302931885.shtml Admitted to practice in Connecticut.As the first professor to hold the Texas Tech School of Law?s new Judge...

Crime Lab: Mississippi's a scary 'CSI' episode

Posted on July 12, 2008
On television, the popular CSI shows give the impression that high-tech tools and amply staffed forensic departments are on the job to solve crime scene investigations. But, in Mississippi, that's fiction, not fact. The inadequacy of Mississippi's "CSI" would make...

Language barrier can hinder the legal process

Posted on July 11, 2008
The recent case of Jos Lopez Meza appears to be an anomaly, but it raises the question of whether non-English speakers who are accused of crimes are being understood. Meza faced a possible death penalty in connection with his infant...

HIDDEN COSTS Communities Pay for High Prison Rate

Posted on July 11, 2008
Now 66 years old, Ms. Coleman has three youngsters at home -- ages 5, 3 and 1. She doesn't know the whereabouts of her granddaughter, who is their mother. As for the children's fathers, they have both been in trouble...

"Touch DNA" Analysis Clears Ramsey Family In JonBenet's Death

Posted on July 11, 2008
The family of JonBenet Ramsey has been formally cleared of any role in the 6-year-old's 1996 murder, a Colorado prosecutor announced Wednesday, citing newly discovered DNA evidence.

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