by Anthony W. Accurso
There are many aspects of the criminal justice system in the U.S. that are in desperate need of reform, but one aspect — how we obtain information from potential suspects — is perhaps more troubling than others because it does more than just undermine the pursuit ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Supreme Court of Arizona held that “the identity of an alleged narcotic drug is an element of ARS § 13-3408, and therefore jury unanimity is required.”
Jorge Romero-Millan, Ernesto Hernandez Cabanillas, and Marco Antonio Garcia-Paz are all Mexican nationals who were lawfully residing in the U.S. ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
“It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”
Known as Blackstone’s ratio, this maxim has been an accepted rule of Western jurisprudence since long before it was uttered in this memorable form by Sir William Blackstone in the 1760s. It explicitly states ...
by Douglas Ankney
On an issue upon which the circuits are split, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that district courts may consider the First Step Act’s (“FSA”) non-retroactive changes to sentencing law, in conjunction with other factors specific to the individual defendant, when deciding whether ...
by Douglas Ankney
According to a September 2022 report from AP News, law enforcement agencies from suburban Southern California to rural North Carolina are using an obscure cellphone tracking tool known as “Fog Reveal” that enables the cops to follow people’s movements months back in time. As of September 2022, ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island’s denial of habeas relief where the court found reversible error under Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986) (defendant may challenge prosecutor’s peremptory strike of prospective ...
by Dale Chappell
Believe it or not, someone proving they’re “actually innocent” of their criminal offense is not enough to win federal habeas corpus relief. That’s because actual innocence, by itself, is not a constitutional violation to allow for federal habeas relief. Instead, it’s only the first step toward relief, ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that district courts must provide habeas petitioners with notice and an opportunity to be heard before dismissing a habeas petition sua sponte (on its own motion) based upon the limitation of Fourth Amendment claims enunciated in Stone ...
by Jacob Barrett
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld a Superior Court’s order granting a motion to suppress a firearm that was discovered during an unlawful patfrisk because the motorist’s criminal record together with his behavior during the traffic stop did not create a reasonable suspicion that he was ...
by David M. Reutter
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that when a prisoner seeks resentencing under the First Step Act, a district court has discretion to consider arguments concerning intervening changes of law since the original sentencing and other arguments in favor of a downward ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed an order of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana that denied absolute immunity to District Attorney Scott Perrilloux and Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Detective Marlon Foster in a suit alleging they fabricated evidence in ...
Five states now allow prosecutors to seek shorter sentences in old cases. Louisiana shows why many DAs haven’t.
by Matt Nadel and Charlie Lee
It had been a long day of mowing brush in the Louisiana heat, so Jeffrey Fornea and his 69-year-old father rested on their back porch in ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that substantive reasonableness review applies to all proceedings under § 404 of the First Step Act of 2018 (“FSA”), regardless of whether the motion is granted or denied.
In February 2009, the U.S. District Court for the ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed two money judgments totaling $62.5 million after holding Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.2(b) (“Rule 32.2(b)”) is a mandatory claims-processing rule with which the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky and the Government failed ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Supreme Court of Colorado held that facts used in determining probable cause to conduct a warrantless search must include those that militate against a finding of probable cause.
Colorado State Patrol Trooper Christian Bollen was watching eastbound traffic on I-70 around 8:00 a.m. on the ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
In a case of first impression, the Supreme Court of Kentucky upheld a suppression order, holding that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their real-time cell-site location information (“CSLI”) and that searches thereof are subject to the Fourth Amendment.
Late one evening, Dovontia Reed ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Court of Appeals of New York reversed Deshawn Deverow’s murder conviction after concluding the trial court’s evidentiary rulings deprived him of “a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense.”
At 12:30 a.m. on December 29, 2012, a woman identified as B.M. called 911 to report that ...
by Casey J. Bastian
Miami Police Department (“MPD”) Chief of Police Manny Morales believes in officer accountability. His statement makes that clear: “If in fact it is determined that it is our officer, he will be held accountable for his actions.” In the statement, Morales described the officer as having ...
by David M. Reutter
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that the U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota abused its discretion in rejecting the Government’s request to dismiss four charges as part of a plea agreement.
Josue Alaniz was found seriously injured in ...
by Douglas Ankney
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”) upgraded its National Software Reference Library (“NSRL”) to make its data easier for law enforcement agencies to access in searches during criminal investigations.
As of March 2022, the dataset of the NSRL contained more than a billion “hash records.” ...
by Douglas Ankney
In August of 2022, a Bronx district attorney dismissed 133 cases linked to disgraced former NYPD Narcotics Detective Joseph Franco. Franco, a 20-year-veteran of the NYPD, was hit with 26 criminal charges in 2019, resulting in the dismissal of 90 cases. As the corruption continued to ooze ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Court of Indiana held that trial courts are to follow the two-pronged definition of Trial Rule (“TR”) 26(B)(3) to determine whether a police report is protected from discovery by the work-product doctrine. In so doing, the Court expressly overruled State ex rel. Keaton v. Cir. ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
An effort by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (“EFF”) to track police use of surveillance technologies is butting up against the decentralized nature of our law enforcement networks in that open-records requests to different agencies for the same information result in wildly variable information — if anything ...
by Casey J. Bastian
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) operates U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”). In turn, ICE oversees the subagency Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”). Since 2019, HSI has used its administrative subpoena powers to request bulk financial records from Western Union and Maxitransfers Corporation (“Maxi”). The ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Criminal Legal News has previously reported on data broker companies — companies that buy and sell data on consumers, most often location data harvested from mobile apps. Fog Data Science is one such company, though one that some believe is quite possibly more dangerous to ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 2022
published in Criminal Legal News
January, 2023, page 50
Arizona: A police officer in Scottsdale was arrested on Nov. 4, 2022, after allegedly causing a car crash while intoxicated. AZFamily reported that officer Michael Lanouar, a police detective, was taken into custody on suspicion that he had been driving a city-leased car while under the influence. He had ...
by Ed Lyon
Houston, Harris County, Texas, is the fourth largest city in the nation, as well as the largest city in Texas. Preceding the Blue Wave of female reformist judges elected in 2018 [See: CLN, April 2019, p.38], Democrat Kim Ogg soundly defeated the incumbent Republican by a ...
