How a Judiciary Poisoned by Politics, Ideology, and Unaccountability Contributes to the Wrongful Conviction of Innocent Men and Women
by Christopher Zoukis, MBA
Alexander Hamilton said in Federalist Paper No. 78 that the judiciary “may truly be said to have neither force nor will but merely judgment.” Because the judiciary ...
by Bill Barton
The Google Sensorvault database has been used by law enforcement agencies on multiple occasions to obtain what are being called “geofence” warrants, which specify an area and period of time and require Google to provide information regarding the devices that were there.
According to nytimes.com, the warrant ...
by Dale Chappell
A sharply divided Supreme Court of the United States narrowly held on June 26, 2019, that the revocation provision of the federal sex offender supervised release statute is unconstitutional because it violates the right to trial by jury under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments – so a ...
by Mark Wilson
Departing from 50 years of precedent, the Supreme Court of Oregon held that Oregonians retain a constitutionally protected privacy interest in garbage that they leave at the curb for pickup under the state’s constitution. The Court also held that police improperly invade that privacy interest when they ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Court of Minnesota ruled that forcing a suspect to undergo an anoscopy to retrieve a baggie from his rectum was an unreasonable search even though police had obtained a warrant permitting the procedure.
Guntallwon Karloyea Brown was arrested after an informant made a controlled purchase ...
by Anthony Accurso
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated and remanded the defendant’s death sentence for first-degree murder because defense counsel failed to investigate mitigating evidence of cognitive defects that would have resulted in a “reasonable probability that the outcome of sentencing would have been different” ...
by Ed Lyon
Readers of Criminal Legal News and Prison Legal News are familiar with the fact that criminal convictions occur mostly as a result of guilty or no-contest pleas.
A recently released report by the Pew Research Center confirms a steady erosion of citizens asserting their right to a ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that the Superior Court abused its discretion when it failed to conduct an evidentiary hearing on a habeas petitioner’s Brady claim and ruled the Appellate Division abused its discretion when it failed to conduct an evidentiary hearing ...
by Anthony Accurso
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that retroactive ACCA claims are not barred by a defendant’s appeal waiver, and defendant’s 1976 Georgia burglary conviction is no longer a valid ACCA predicate.
Randall Cornette was convicted of being a felon in possession of a ...
by Dale Chappell
In a case that may have lowered one of the hurdles erected by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to stop the flow of relief being handed to federal prisoners under Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551(2015) (“Johnson 2015”), the Court held ...
by Jayson Hawkins
In the push for criminal justice reform, several ideas have emerged to help fix our broken system.
Many experts have promoted risk assessments as effective tools that could be employed at every level of criminal justice to provide more objective standards. Widespread use of these tools is ...
by Jessica Brand, The Appeal
This Explainer was produced by The Appeal, a nonprofit criminal justice news site.
In our Explainer series, Justice Collaborative lawyers and other legal experts help unpack some of the most complicated issues in the criminal justice system. We break down the problems behind the headlines—like ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed a district court’s decision that a prosecutor does not enjoy absolute immunity from suit for fabricating evidence during a preliminary investigation.
In November 1999, 14-year-old C.A. was reported missing by Floyd Bledsoe. C.A. was the younger sister ...
by David Reutter
The Supreme Court of Michigan held that a defendant did not expose herself to public arrest when she reached out of her doorway to retrieve her identification from a police officer — and there could be no “hot pursuit” when she pulled her arm back into the ...
by Dale Chappell
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California granted postconviction relief on June 12, 2019, to a federal prisoner serving a mandatory life sentence, holding that the so-called “residual clause” of the federal three-strikes law is unconstitutional.
The case came before the Court in a ...
by Bill Barton
DNA testing, once an expensive technology, is now so inexpensive that approximately 26 million people have taken advantage of it,” according to Slate.com. “With sites like Ancestry.com and 23andMe, you can easily submit samples of your DNA and receive information about your family history and personal health. ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Court of New Hampshire held that the state’s armed career criminal statute (codified at RSA 159:3-a) applies only to persons whose qualifying convictions arise from three or more separate criminal episodes.
Jonathan Folds allegedly sold 50 grams of heroin to a “cooperating individual” (“CI”). Based ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit announced that something more than psychological coercion is required before a sentencing court can apply the two-level enhancement of U.S.S.G. § 2B3.1(b)(4)(B).
Jacob Kirk invited Joshua Herman to Kirk’s house in Hammond, Indiana. Samantha Daniels, Kirk’s mother, was ...
by Douglas Ankney
In a case of first impression, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that the text of the Sexual Offense Registration and Notification Act (“SORNA”) does not permit a court, when applying the categorical approach to determine sex offender tier levels, to conduct a ...
by Dale Chappell
In a case applying a newly minted U.S. Supreme Court decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that an appeal waiver in a plea agreement did not relieve counsel of his duty to consult with his client about filing an appeal.
When the ...
by Anthony Accurso
The Supreme Court of the State of Delaware held that when a defendant has been declared competent to plead guilty he retains the right to revoke his plea of “guilty but mentally ill” before the court accepts it.
Martin Taylor was found with knife wounds on his ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Court of Appeals of Maryland held that where a circuit court imposed on remand a sentence of equal maximum length as the former sentence, but required a longer period of incarceration before parole eligibility than the former sentence, the new sentence was “more severe” for purposes ...
by Bill Barton
A report by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt reveals that black motorists in that state are 91 percent more likely to be pulled over than whites. The 2018 report illuminating this statistic was released in May.
Scott Decker, an Arizona State University professor of criminology and criminal ...
by Douglas Ankney
Republican Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota recently signed House Bill 1286, “which seriously curtails law enforcement agencies’ ability to arrest somebody, take his or her property, and attempt to keep what they seized for themselves even when they cannot prove an underlying crime,” according to reason.com. ...
by Douglas Ankney
In a case of first impression, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit announced that a district court cannot sua sponte raise a defendant’s waiver of the right to seek relief under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2) and deny the defendant’s motion for resentencing on that ...
by Anthony Accurso
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that when a prosecutor performs a purely administrative function in relation to a criminal prosecution, she does not enjoy absolute prosecutorial immunity from suits brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
Rolando Penate was charged with drug-related offenses ...
by Jayson Hawkins
A federal study from 2013 showed that manually sorting DNA mixtures is not as foolproof as previously believed. MIX13, which sent the same hypothetical cases to 108 crime labs around the U.S., tested the accuracy of traditional DNA analysis. Each of the five cases grew more complicated ...
by Bill Barton
Richard Phillips, a Michigan man who was wrongfully incarcerated for 46 years before being exonerated in spring 2018, will receive a settlement of $1.5 million from the state, more than a year after he was released without even as much as a bus ticket. Phillips is the ...
by Michael Berk
An Arkansas state trooper violated a motorist’s First and Fourth Amendment rights when he arrested him for yelling “F--k you,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held in June 2019, affirming the district court’s denial of qualified immunity for the official.
In 2015, trooper ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit vacated a special condition of supervised release that gave discretion to probation officers to completely ban the defendant’s use of a computer and of the Internet.
Michael Lyle Blair was convicted of possession of child pornography after police ...
by Anthony Accurso
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit joined the Fourth and Tenth Circuits in holding that tier classification under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (“SORNA”) compels a hybrid approach to classifying a defendant’s crime, which underlies a charge of failing to register.
In ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Court of Kentucky held that the Parole Board’s (“Board”) current conditional-freedom final revocation hearing procedures for post-incarceration supervisees violate an offender’s due process rights.
David Wayne Bailey was released from prison and placed on a five-year period of post-incarceration supervision. A condition of that supervision ...
by Dale Chappell
A public records request by the Chicago Tribune found that the Chicago Police Department has been doing background checks and creating files on citizens who speak at weekly meetings of the city’s police disciplinary board. A police spokesman admitted it goes back to at least 2018.
Documents ...
by Ed Lyon
There is a time-worn, yet usually quite-accurate saying that states: “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” Thanks in great part to Philadelphia attorney Emily Baker-White’s efforts as leader of The Plain View Project (“PVP”), a national study of cops’ social media posts, that old adage has taken on ...
by Bill Barton
Anthony Blas Yepez, in October 2012, beat to death the 75-year-old boyfriend of his girlfriend’s mother in a drunken dispute. Charged with first-degree murder, Yepez said he could not remember much of the incident and didn’t know why his reaction was so violent. Public defender Ian Loyd, ...
Loaded on
Sept. 17, 2019
published in Criminal Legal News
October, 2019, page 42
Arizona: On the heels of a record 44 cop shootings in 2018, a new policy now requires Phoenix police who draw and point their guns to “self report,” azcentral.com reports. And after they document their actions, “a supervisor will review each incident,” theroot.com reports. “When a gun is pointed ...
