He Declined the FBI’s Offer to Become an Informant. Then His Life Was Ruined.
by Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept
Aswad Khan didn’t understandwhypeople were congratulating him. On a February morning in 2017, rolling out of bed at his home in an upper-middle class area of Karachi, Pakistan, Khan saw a ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit vacated the U.S. District Court for the District of Western Tennessee’s denial of a defendant’s suppression motion, ruling the court applied the standard for judging exceptions to the warrant requirement under the attenuation doctrine instead of the ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas held that possession of a firearm by a convicted felon is a “circumstances offense;” consequently, simultaneously possessing multiple firearms is one offense.
Floyd Woods was charged by two indictments with the offense of unlawful possession of a firearm by a ...
by Matt Clarke
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that a prior conviction for aggravated assault with a firearm under Louisiana state law, La. R.S. 14:37.4 is not categorically a “crime of violence” as defined by U.S. Sentencing Guidelines § 4B1.2(a) and therefore could not be ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit remanded to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois for resentencing where that court’s inoculating statement regarding a potential Sentencing Guidelines miscalculation failed to satisfy the conditions enunciated in United States v. Abbas, 560 ...
by Dale Chappell
District court judges in the federal courts have always had judicial assistants, in addition to law clerks, helping with their caseloads. Long before magistrate judges became what they are today, they were called “commissioners,” who were basically lawyers hired on an as-needed basis.
But in 1958, Congress ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Court of Michigan announced that a forfeited structural error automatically satisfies the third prong of the plain error standard without a showing of prejudice and creates a rebuttable presumption that the error seriously affected the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings.
On the ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Supreme Judicial Court (“SJC”) of Massachusetts validated one warrant for cell site location information (“CSLI”) while finding a second deficient for failure to establish probable cause, and it issued prospective guidelines for CSLI warrants going forward.
Seven businesses around the Boston area were subject to ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that coram nobis relief is the appropriate remedy to achieve justice where the petitioner had completed service of the sentence imposed on conviction of offense for which he was actually innocent.
In November 2011, Brooks Prentice Lesane ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
The U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) issued a bombshell report on October 13, 2022, revealing that the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department “systematically violated criminal defendants’ Sixth Amendment right to counsel and Fourteenth Amendment right to due process of law” ...
by Harold Hempstead
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania held that a vindictive sentencing claim pursuant to North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711 (1969), meets the definition of a legality challenge that is cognizable under the Post-Conviction Relief Act (“PCRA”), 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 9541-46.
In 2007, Mark Prinkey was ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit clarified the framework for application of the minor-role adjustment of U.S. Sentencing Guideline (“U.S.S.G.”) § 3B1.2(b).
A man identified as “Gordo” overheard Jesus Ezequiel Rodriguez complaining that employment was hard to find during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gordo offered ...
by Jacob Barrett
In a case of first impression in Washington, the Supreme Court of Washington clarified its seizure analysis by expressly holding that race and ethnicity are relevant factors in determining whether a person has been seized.
In April 2019, Pierce County Sheriff’s Deputy Mark Rickerson was on patrol ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
In a case of first impression, the Supreme Court of Wyoming held that the district court erred in ruling an officer had implied consent to enter a suspect’s home without a warrant because the totality of circumstances would not lead a reasonable officer to believe he ...
by Jacob Barrett
In a case of first impression in the
circuit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that District Courts adjudicating a prisoner-initiated motion for compassionate release under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i) are not bound by the Sentencing Commission’s current policy statement in U.S. Sentencing ...
by Jacob Barrett
In a case of first impression, the Supreme Court of Louisiana held double jeopardy bars the reinstatement and retrial of a defendant on a higher charge when he has been lawfully convicted of a lesser included offense, even though the conviction was later vacated, and further held ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit clarified its uniform procedure for disposition of cases in which a plea agreement includes an appeal waiver and the defendant nevertheless files a notice of appeal.
Dinish Watson pleaded guilty to federal charges pursuant to the terms of ...
by Mark Wilson
The Supreme Court of Rhode Island upheld a lower court’s suppression of un-Mirandized statements made to police, finding that the defendant was in custody at the scene of an automobile collision.
On October 23, 2018, Joseph Corcoran’s vehicle struck a light pole on a Rhode Island ...
by Jayson Hawkins
Big Brother is still watching. Amid a growing chorus of troubling reports about the extraordinarily effective efforts of the police state in China to spy on its citizens’ online activity, evidence continues to accumulate showing that police excel at snooping around social media in America, too. In ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania held that challenges to the legality of an imposed sentence — including registration requirements under SORNA — cannot be waived and can thus be brought at any time.
For various sexually-related offenses, Shaune Jarel Thorne, Sr. was sentenced on April 9, ...
by Douglas Ankney
During the 13-year period from 2001 to 2014, Lyndon McLellan worked hard, expanding his small, roadside convenience store to include a restaurant and lunch counter. He’d managed to save a little over $107,000. But in less than 13 seconds, the IRS took all of McLellan’s savings — ...
by Jayson Hawkins
Public scrutiny of police behavior in recent years has mostly failed to bring about substantive change in the way police operate in America. Many causes have been put forward to explain the institutional resistance to change, from racism to police intransigence. A recent paper by Max M. ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
A company called Ventra in February 2022 presented its new facial recognition software that rapidly searches voluminous video footage for a face and then identifies the faces of other people who came in contact with the target.
The relevant portion of the presentation to surveillance research ...
by Jayson Hawkins
A new Illinois statute is the first in the nation to require police to have a search warrant or the owner’s permission before accessing their data on a personal device. The Protecting Household Privacy Act, which went into effect on January 1, 2022, is intended to establish ...
by Jayson Hawkins
A new study published in the American Sociological Review (“ASR”) challenges the efficacy and rationale of the growing body of fees and fines being imposed for minor offenses in courts across the U.S. The study asserts that these fines have no deterrent value and simply punish, or ...
by Douglas Ankney
On June 6, 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation that made New York the second state to require microstamping of semiautomatic pistols. It took ten years from its proposal to be enacted, but the new law requires semiautomatic pistols manufactured and sold in the state to be ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
In a recent review of new location tracking tech, New York Times writer Kashmir Hill tested several tools with the help of her husband Trevor Timm, who is also executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
They concluded that these tools are easy to use ...
by Casey J. Bastian
Among an individual’s rights enshrined in the U.S Constitution is their Sixth Amendment right to assistance of legal counsel. The principle ensures an accused person in America is able to defend against a criminal prosecution. This right has been expanded by the Supreme Court of the ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The revolving door between government agencies and private corporations has been well documented in industries like healthcare, defense, and fossil fuels, along with the democracy-eroding effects of such relationships. A worrying new trend shows surveillance companies and law enforcement agencies establishing such relationships.
While Amazon recently ...
by Casey J. Bastian
The murder of George Floyd in 2020 resulted in massive Black Lives Matter protests and vigorous calls to defund the police. Politicians across the country seemed to respond to those demands. Budgets were slashed, and cities reduced policing while implementing community-based alternatives. It appears the heat ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The shady economy of data brokers vacuums up personal data from hundreds of millions of people — mostly in the U.S. but also in other countries — and this data is sold to anyone willing to pay for it, including law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and the ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Police are tapping into a new source for their insatiable desire to collect video footage of innocent citizens — autonomous vehicles.
Cops don’t like being filmed. Despite citizens having a right to capture officers on camera during the performance of their official duties in public, some ...
by Douglas Ankney
Commerce City, Colorado, paid $175,000 to settle a suit alleging police officer Chris Dickey tased Joshua Condiotti-Wade because Dickey was angered by Condiotti-Wade’s placards that read “Fuck Bad Cops” and “Blue Lives Murder.”
Dickey’s bodycam showed him approaching Condiotti-Wade and another man holding the placards while protesting ...
by Casey J. Bastian
Our society is increasingly reliant on data and technology in nearly every sector, both public and private. Law enforcement and public safety institutions are regular consumers of data offerings. Tech companies like Accenture, Microsoft, Oracle, HunchLab, ShotSpotter, and PredPol are maximizing financial opportunities by “improving” policing. ...
by Jacob Barrett
A study by the Death Penalty Information Center (“DPIC”) found more than 550 death penalty reversals and exonerations were the result of extensive prosecutorial misconduct. DPIC reviewed and identified cases since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned existing death penalty laws in 1972. That amounted to over 5.6% ...
by Jayson Hawkins
Civil forfeiture, the government confiscation of cash or assets believed to be related to criminal activity, has been a favorite tool of police since the early days of the war on drugs. The process requires a low burden of proof, the money goes directly to police budgets, ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2022
published in Criminal Legal News
December, 2022, page 50
Alabama: Court documents revealed the week of Oct. 3, 2022, show that a former Brookside police chief, Mike Jones, was indicted by a grand jury for speeding and impersonating an officer. AL.com reported that Jones had resigned from his post as the town’s Chief of Police on Jan. 25, ...
by Casey J. Bastian
A recent ad campaign in Charlotte, North Carolina, asks viewers to “Shine a light on drug trafficking.” A new tip line was introduced, purportedly intended to help agents intercept massive drug shipments coming into the Charlotte metro area. People are incentivized to call through promises of ...
