by Anthony W. Accurso
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that a defendant being compelled to provide a thumbprint constitutes a testimonial act where it is used to establish ownership of a cellphone and its contents.
Background
Jeffrey Brown, Markus Maly, and Peter Schwartz were charged ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Supreme Court of Colorado held that a defendant who had her hands bagged and secured with zip ties to preserve any evidence of gunpowder residue without her consent at the police station and was confined to an interrogation room with the door closed was in ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that the Government failed to satisfy its burden of proof that the emergency-aid exception to the warrant requirement applied to justify police officers’ warrantless entry into a home where the facts showed they had reason ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Axon, a company that makes products (including weapons) and services available to police departments, has begun selling a new product designed to use artificial intelligence (“AI”) to turn bodycam audio into police reports. However, a recent ACLU white paper expresses skepticism while cautioning against wider deployment. ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Supreme Court of Illinois invalidated an officer’s search of a vehicle and held that the odor of burnt cannabis, on its own, is insufficient to justify a warrantless search of a driver’s vehicle.
On September 15, 2020, Ryan Redmond was driving from Des Moines, Iowa, ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Desorption electrospray ionization, a type of mass spectrometry (“DESI-MS”), is being studied as a way to analyze overlapping or weak fingerprints, solving an age-old problem of evidence quality.
For over a century since Scotland Yard established its first Fingerprint Bureau, the issues of overlapping or weak ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Supreme Court of Georgia unanimously granted a defendant’s habeas petition on the ground both his trial and appellate lawyers provided ineffective assistance of counsel based on the fact his first-degree burglary conviction was improper where the building he robbed was not “the dwelling of another” ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Supreme Court for the State of Nevada reversed a trial court’s order denying a defendant’s suppression motion, holding that the search warrant authorizing the search of the defendant’s home could not be expanded to his person outside the home simply because the affidavit supporting the ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Supreme Court of Arkansas held that courts have jurisdiction to hear habeas motions authorized by Act 1780 of 2001, in which a defendant may request new scientific testing of evidence to establish their actual innocence claim, even if the defendant has been released from custody ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Court of Appeal of California, Second District, overturned the denial of a defendant’s suppression motion by ruling that the officers’ show of force meant the encounter was non-consensual and that the defendant’s attire was insufficient to justify the detention.
Just before midnight on July 12, ...
