by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc, held that U.S. District Courts must either orally pronounce all discretionary conditions of supervised release, including those referred to as “standard” in U.S. Sentencing Guidelines (“U.S.S.G.”) § 5D1.3(c), in the presence of the defendant at sentencing ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Court of New Mexico held that the holding of State v. Marquez, 376 P.3d 815 (N.M. 2016), wherein the Court ruled that “the crime of shooting at or from a motor vehicle may not serve as the predicate felony in support of a felony murder ...
by Douglas Ankney
Traditionally, police officers are taught to take control of a volatile encounter, ensuring the safety of all officers present by approaching an unstable situation with weapons drawn. The underlying message is: “Make sure that you and your partner go home safe tonight.”
De-escalation training, by contrast, teaches ...
by Douglas Ankney
According to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal, a company known as Near Intelligence purchases individuals’ private data from brokers who usually sell the data to advertisers, but Near Intelligence sells the data to government contractors who then pass the data along to federal military and ...
by Douglas Ankney
DNA, while remarkably resilient, may be degraded by exposure to ultraviolet radiation, extreme temperatures, humidity, and microbial activity. These exposures may result in “single-strand and double-strand breaks, depurination, deamination, and crosslinks.” Consequently, the DNA “becomes fragmented, diminishing its suitability for traditional forensic analysis methods that rely on ...
by Douglas Ankney
The National Public Defense Workload Study (“Study”) examined the guidelines created by the National Advisory Committee in 1973 (“NAC Standards”) that determine the recommended number of cases annually that a public defender should handle. The Study was conducted by a team of attorneys and researchers from the ...
by Douglas Ankney
Eyewitness identifications of possible perpetrators of crime are often unreliable. Scientific identifications by comparison of DNA profiles and fingerprint exemplars are, by far, more trustworthy. But coming soon may be identifications made by analysis of 3D-scanned footwear.
Analysis of footwear impressions left at crime scenes has long ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Court of Appeal of California, First Appellate District, held that a probation condition prohibiting possession of pornographic materials was impermissibly vague.
Michael Gruis pleaded no contest to one count of possession of child pornography in violation of California Penal Code § 311.11(a). The trial court suspended imposition ...
by Douglas Ankney
According to a September 2023 report from foxnews.com, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) is “shelling out more than $6 billion to private companies to manage its asset forfeiture investigations.” When the government merely alleges that money, homes, land, boats, cars, and other property is linked to ...
by Douglas Ankney
“Cooperation is a horrible thing for clients. Doing law enforcement’s job and requiring someone to bargain for their freedom encourages an ugly, unfair, and unjust system to become even more so that way.”
Those are the words of an anonymous federal defense attorney who participated in a ...
