by Anthony W. Accurso
New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Gresham signed SB64, the No Life Sentences for Juveniles Act, into law on March 17, 2023, ending life without parole (“LWOP”) sentencing for offenders under 18 years of age. New Mexico joined 24 other states and the District of Columbia in ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (“EFF”) released an interactive map to track the network of surveillance towers along the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada, as well as several and some less obvious locations, and which explains the contractors and technology in use at each tower.
Customs ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
A new report from PrisonPolicy.org was released with the purpose of informing prison policymakers and the public about the true costs of the criminal justice system, which includes both prisons and various forms of community supervision – probation, parole, supervised release, and involuntary civil commitment. The ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit vacated a defendant’s sentence where the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado improperly applied a Guidelines enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(b)(6)(B) based on a mistaken application of Colorado law.
Lougary Eddington was involved in a ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held a district court erred in denying a defendant’s suppression motion regarding an unreasonable seizure and search, finding he was not required to prove he was unarmed.
Anthony Eugene Peters and Gary Garrison were walking in ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Supreme Court of New Mexico allowed a defendant to withdraw his plea deal after the district court corrected his sentence to include a lengthier term of parole, because he could not “knowingly and voluntarily” take the deal without being aware of the mandatory parole ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
New techniques using artificial intelligence to analyze voices fall short of meeting the standard for court admissibility, but that hasn’t stopped police from coercing plea deals out of defendants while claiming the “evidence” against them is sound.
For over a 100 years, the ability to identify ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Supreme Court of Oregon clarified the procedure, flowing from its previous doctrine on cellphone searches, for reviewing search conditions for reasonableness and announced the framework for suppression where a warrant contains both constitutional and unconstitutional search categories.
Detective Opitz of the Beaverton Police Department obtained ...
by Anthony W Accurso
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit required suppression of evidence based upon a warrant for evidence related to a structure fire where the government failed to establish probable cause to believe the fire was caused by arson or otherwise the result of criminal activity.
The Lexington, Kentucky, Fire Department sent Chris O’Bryan to investigate a structure fire at 428 Douglas Avenue. The fire consumed a portion of an unattached shed but did not spread to the vacant house on the property.
O’Bryan interviewed nearby residents and the non-resident owner who said “the word out there is that somebody pulled up in a vehicle and was … seen removing things out of the shed just prior to the fire.”
He also noticed the residence at 430 Douglas Avenue had security cameras that may have captured video of the shed at the time of the fire. O’Bryan made contact with Quincino Waide, the owner of 430 and occupant of Apt. 3, who allegedly smelled of “what [O’Bryan] thought was marijuana.” When asked about the DVR for the security cameras, Waide declined to share them.
Despite there being no reliable evidence to establish probable cause to ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
A research project in Arizona seeks to develop support for a method of determining time of death by cataloging information about blowfly species.
The gases emitted by a corpse can attract nearby blowflies to colonize and help break down a body. While blowflies will get to a body within minutes, the life cycle of the flies will vary depending on the specific species, making the process of determining the time of death imprecise.
“Species identification is the most critical step,” said Jonathan Parrott, an assistant professor of forensic science at Arizona State University. “If you identify the species wrong, you’re going to be applying incorrect data to your estimated time of death.”
According to Forensic Magazine, “a blowfly species found on an abandoned body during summer in Chandler, Arizona, may have a different life cycle than a blowfly in the winter just 30 miles north.”
Parrott’s project has been using DNA to identify distinct blowfly species, then subjecting each to specific temperature and humidity environments to obtain information about how these affect the timing of a fly’s life cycle.
“What makes our research unique is that there has not been any developmental or DNA data ...
