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Articles by Anthony Accurso

Massachusetts Supreme Court: Prosecution Failed to Prove Defendant Knowingly, Voluntarily, and Intelligently Waived Right to Counsel After Having Asked for Lawyer Earlier But Officer Continued to Engage in ‘General’ Talk for Nearly 45 Minutes

by Anthony W. Accurso

The Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts upheld the suppression of a defendant’s statements to police after invoking his right to an attorney, because the Commonwealth failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he had knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently waived his right to ...

North Dakota Supreme Court Suppresses Evidence Found in Passenger’s Backpack Located Outside Vehicle When Drug-Detection Dog Alerted to Presence of Drugs Inside Vehicle

by Anthony W. Accurso

The Supreme Court of North Dakota upheld the suppression of evidence obtained from a warrantless backpack search because neither the automobile nor the search incident to arrest exception applied, and the inevitable discovery doctrine didn’t apply.

On August 28, 2019, Nicholas Lelm was a passenger in ...

FBI Program Surveils Subject for 24 Days Using Spy Planes

by Anthony W. Accurso

Samuel Landes, a federal public defender representing Muhammed Momtaz Alazhari, filed a motion in federal court on August 30, 2021, alleging that the FBI used its small fleet of Cessna airplanes outfitted with spy equipment to continuously surveil Alazhari for 429 hours between April 18 and ...

California Court of Appeal Announces Suffering From a Nonqualifying Mental Disorder While Also Suffering From a Qualifying Disorder Does Not Bar Eligibility for Mental Health Diversion Under § 1001.36

by Anthony W. Accurso

The Court of Appeal of California, Fifth Appellate District, vacated a trial court’s decision to deny a defendant participation in mental health diversion, ruling that a diagnosis of Antisocial-Personality Disorder (“ASPD”)—an excluded condition under the statute—does not disqualify him because he was also diagnosed with at ...

Google Confirms Increasing Police Reliance on Geofence Warrants

by Anthony W. Accurso

Since a New York Times articlein 2019 broke the news that Google’s Sensorvault database stores location information from hundreds of millions of devices worldwide, we have also learned that law enforcement have been increasingly reliant on this data to help solve crimes. Just how reliant they ...

NYPD Using Secret Money for Surveillance Tech

by Anthony W. Accurso

A public-records request uncovered details about the New York Police Department’s use of a secret fund the agency has been using to purchase surveillance tech.

Two civil rights groups, the Legal Aid Society and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, obtained documents that were released by Wired ...

Georgia Supreme Court Declares ‘Relevance’ Not Legal Standard for Suppression Determination Where Items Seized Outside Scope of Warrant, Clarifies Plain View Doctrine Proper Standard, and Overrules McBee, Walsh Line of Cases

by Anthony W. Accurso

The Supreme Court of Georgia overruled the Court of Appeals’ line of cases starting with McBee v. State, 491 S.E.2d 97 (Ga. Ct. App. 1997), that apply a “relevance” standard to whether evidence seized outside the scope of a search warrant must be suppressed because ...

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Announces Bodycam Video Subsequently Reviewed in Unrelated Investigation Constitutes Unconstitutional Warrantless Search

by Anthony W. Accurso 

In a case of first impression on two issues, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (“SJC”) held that (1) an officer wearing a bodycam inside a suspect’s home during a domestic disturbance call was not a search under the Fourth Amendment and Article 14 and (2) ...

Vermont Supreme Court Announces Proper Legal Standard for Warrantless Search of Home’s Curtilage

by Anthony W. Accurso 

The Vermont Supreme Court held that it is an unconstitutional search where an officer actively searches for evidence of a crime on a home’s curtilage while present for purpose unrelated to that search.

On August 29, 2019, Devan Calabrese was alleged to have threatened three persons ...

Facial Recognition Run-Down

by Anthony W. Accurso 

Facial recognition is a technology that is rapidly evolving, aided by transformative gains in artificial intelligence and camera resolution, as well as the proliferation of ubiquitous surveillance systems—by both government and corporate actors—which provide the volume of data necessary to train facial recognition systems and create ...

 

 

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