by Christopher Zoukis
On September 15, 2017, 18-year-old Anna Chambers was taken into custody by two NYPD detectives on suspicion of smoking marijuana. According to Chambers, the detectives handcuffed her, led her into the back of an unmarked van with tinted windows, and raped her repeatedly. About an hour later, ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The Durham, North Carolina City Council faced an unusual debate at a recent meeting. Activist groups urged the council to prohibit city police officers from participating in police training exchanges with Israel. According to the groups, such training promotes the militarization of police forces. Council members agreed ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed a district court’s ruling that evidence obtained from an unlawfully extended traffic stop must be suppressed. The March 7, 2018, decision upheld the lower court’s ruling that the police officer did not have the reasonable suspicion ...
by Christopher Zoukis
A new report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (“EFF”) has revealed some disturbing facts about facial recognition systems, which are becoming very popular law enforcement investigative tools.
According to the February 2018 report, one in every two American adults is already in a law enforcement facial recognition ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed a district court’s denial of a former prisoner’s 28 U.S.C. § 2255 petition, in which he claimed that his guilty plea to charges of failure to register as a sex offender was the result of ineffective ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania vacated a convicted murderer’s death sentence after concluding that the prisoner suffered from an intellectual disability, rendering him ineligible for the death penalty. The February 5, 2018, order replaced the defendant’s death sentence with a sentence of life imprisonment.
James VanDivner was ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled on February 9, 2018, that Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971) does not require a U.S. district court to abstain from hearing a petition for a writ of habeas corpus challenging the conditions of pretrial ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The website Techdirt.com reported on a Department of Justice Inspector General’s report looking into how the FBI uses classified tools meant for national security investigations in run-of-the-mill cases. It seems that government-developed software hacks, malware, and surveillance equipment—classified, national security tools—are finding their way across a “line ...
by Christopher Zoukis
Risk assessment software is all the rage in criminal justice circles. Programs such as COMPAS — Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions — are hailed as the ideal method for answering the all-important question: Will a given individual reoffend?
Algorithms and data, after all, are (supposedly) ...
by Christopher Zoukis
Jose Perez, a parolee who was assaulted, arrested and re-imprisoned over charges that were later dismissed, agreed to a $25,000 settlement with New York City in response to a federal suit alleging violation of his civil rights.
On June 24, 2010, Perez was returning to his ...
