by Douglas Ankney
Brad Sigmon, 63, was scheduled to be killed on June 18, 2021, at the hands of the people of South Carolina in their perverse and bizarre notion of justice. But on June 16, 2021, the South Carolina Supreme Court stayed his killing. The Court announced it would ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that, in making an individualized determination about whether extraordinary and compelling reasons merit compassionate release, a district court may include, along with other factors, the disparity between a defendant’s actual sentence and the sentence he would have ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reversed the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado’s denial of Hunter Trey Venezia’s motion to suppress because the Government’s reliance upon the community-caretaking exception to the warrant requirement was based upon an unreasonable community-caretaking rationale.
Officers ...
by Douglas Ankney
The law of the land is that the “search incident to arrest” exception to the warrant requirement does not apply to the contents of a cellphone. But what about seizures of cellphones? Has the rule become, “I can take your phone because I’m a cop?”
Police officers ...
by Doug Ankney
A unanimous Supreme Court of the United States (“SCOTUS”) held that the “community caretaking” function of police announced in Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433 (1973), which permits police to search an impounded vehicle without a warrant, does not create a standalone exception to the warrant ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit extended the holding in Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332 (2009) (vehicle may be searched incident to arrest without a warrant if police reasonably believe that the arrestee “could have accessed his car at the time of ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Court of Texas held that under Article 55.01(a)(2)(A) of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure multiple misdemeanor offenses charged in a single arrest are eligible for expunction on an individual basis.
R.P.G.P. was arrested for a misdemeanor driving while intoxicated (“DWI”) offense. An inventory search ...
by Douglas Ankney
While former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin stood trial for the murder of George Floyd, police in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright during a traffic stop. Protesters assembled outside Brooklyn Center’s police headquarters.
The crowd control tactics inflicted upon the protesters were of ...
by Doug Ankney
Melanie Bailey, a forensic scientist at the University of Surrey, revealed that by using a high-resolution mass spectrometry (“HRMS”) method to detect cocaine in fingerprints, she and her team can now distinguish between fingerprints left by persons who had ingested cocaine and fingerprints left by persons who ...
by Doug Ankney
According to a study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (“PENN”), testing of the accuracy of seven smartphone breath alcohol testing devices revealed each device underestimated Blood-Alcohol Concentration (“BAC”) by more than 0.01%. To assess these devices, researchers used 20 moderate drinkers ...
