by Dale Chappell
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the use of unconvicted criminal conduct that was too dissimilar to the charged offense to obtain a conviction violates a defendant’s due process rights and granted habeas corpus relief, vacating a murder conviction and death sentence. ...
by Dale Chappell
In a case where a prosecutor pulled statements from a detective during testimony before a jury that tied a defendant to the crime – and without that witness testifying in court himself – the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that this violated the ...
by Dale Chappell
The Supreme Court of Arizona held on September 1, 2020, that a statute increasing a misdemeanor charge to a felony for merely being part of a gang is unconstitutional on its face as a violation of substantive due process, affirming a trial court’s dismissal of the charges. ...
by Dale Chappell
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held on August 3, 2020, that the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico’s focus on the dangerousness of machine guns and their link to brutal crimes in general are not permissible reasons to impose a ...
by Dale Chappell
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit expanded the First Step Act’s “covered offense” for crack cocaine sentence reductions to include all of the federal statute penalizing crack cocaine offenses, even if the change would not affect the penalty range for a particular offense. As ...
by Dale Chappell
In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of Duane Buck, a Black man who was painted by an expert at trial as more dangerous and deserved to die simply because he was Black. The Court held that “some toxins can be deadly in small ...
by Dale Chappell
With the countless ways the government can collect data on you, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (“EFF”) has introduced three new tools to help you identify what technologies are being used by government agencies to watch you. The tools are free to use and do not collect any ...
by Dale Chappell
Touted as a convenient way to monitor who’s at your front door, internet-enabled doorbell cameras send alerts to users’ cellphones where they can view the camera footage in real-time from a remote location. It’s a great way to record and report suspected activity, the device makers say. ...
by Dale Chappell
For the first time since 1862, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided a record low number of regular-docket cases – just 52. But that doesn’t mean the highest court in the land wasn’t busy. In fact, it was busier than ever, handing down decisions under the cover ...
by Dale Chappell
The Court of Appeal of California, Third Appellate District, granted habeas relief on April 3, 2020, in a case where appellate counsel failed to request a jury instruction that could have led to a lesser included conviction, requiring the vacatur of a murder conviction.
Jonathan Hampton filed ...
