by Douglas Ankney and James Mills
According to a 2023 report from the Prison Policy Initiative, about 1.9 million people are imprisoned in America. More than 500,000 people are released from prison each year in addition to the more than 10 million who cycle through the nation’s jails. Most of ...
by Sam Rutherford
The Supreme Court of Hawai’i reversed a murder conviction for prosecutorial misconduct where a deputy prosecutor described the defendant as a liar and inserted personal opinions concerning the defense theory during closing arguments.
Background
On June 1, 2021, just after midnight, Elijah Horn was near Kuhio Beach ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that a defendant being compelled to provide a thumbprint constitutes a testimonial act where it is used to establish ownership of a cellphone and its contents.
Background
Jeffrey Brown, Markus Maly, and Peter Schwartz were charged ...
by John & Nisha Whitehead
"There are always risks in challenging excessive police power, but the risks of not challenging it are more dangerous, even fatal.”—Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear
The American police state has become America’s new crime boss.
Thirty years after then-President Bill Clinton signed the Violent ...
by David M. Reutter
Are federal courts participating in a legal fiction during sentencing proceedings to maintain a peculiar but potentially necessary mechanism to resolve criminal cases without a jury? That question and the effects thereof are the subject of Plea Agreements and Suspending Disbelief (“Essay”). In his Essay, Sam ...
by Sam Rutherford
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania’s order granting a Pennsylvania prisoner’s habeas corpus petition based on violations of his right to confront an adverse witness and to effective assistance of counsel. Both claims ...
by Casey J. Bastian
Legal scholars and practitioners have begun raising concerns that there is a lack of judicial diversity on court benches in America and abroad. While there have been serious efforts to increase racial and gender diversity, a more impactful form of diversity—professional diversity—is often overlooked. Data suggests ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Supreme Court of Colorado held that a defendant who had her hands bagged and secured with zip ties to preserve any evidence of gunpowder residue without her consent at the police station and was confined to an interrogation room with the door closed was in ...
by Douglas Ankney
In consolidated appeals, the Court of Appeal of California, Fourth Appellate District, held that the evidence was insufficient to show that a robbery victim was moved a “substantial distance” to support kidnapping convictions and further held that the amendments to California Penal Code § 186.22 enacted by Assembly ...
by Sam Rutherford
In a case containing factual allegations that seem like they were lifted from a movie or novel, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed and remanded for trial a federal civil rights action in which the plaintiff alleged that local police altered police reports ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
Social media has revolutionized connectivity, allowing people to develop and maintain relationships well beyond what was possible just a generation earlier. The revolution has, however, enabled the joint planning, execution, and documentation of crimes. It is therefore no surprise that law enforcement wants to access social ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
With every breath you take, you shed DNA. It is in the skin cells that flake off your body by the millions, the hair that floats off as you walk, and the oil you leave behind on many of the things you touch. And scientists are ...
by Sam Rutherford
The California Court of Appeal, Sixth District, held that defendants are entitled to obtain exculpatory or impeaching evidence under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), from police officer personnel files in advance of an evidentiary hearing on their Cal. Penal Code § 1172.6 petitions through a motion ...
by David M. Reutter
The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit vacated a two-level sentencing enhancement imposed upon Djuna Goncalves after the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts found he was “an organizer, leader, supervisor, or manager” under U.S. Sentencing Guidelines (“U.S.S.G.”) § 3B1.1(c). The Court ...
by Sam Rutherford
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts vacated a threat-based conviction because the jury instructions provided setting forth the elements of that offense did not require the Commonwealth to prove that the defendant uttered a true threat of violence with the requisite mens rea of recklessness, as required ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that the Government failed to satisfy its burden of proof that the emergency-aid exception to the warrant requirement applied to justify police officers’ warrantless entry into a home where the facts showed they had reason ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Axon, a company that makes products (including weapons) and services available to police departments, has begun selling a new product designed to use artificial intelligence (“AI”) to turn bodycam audio into police reports. However, a recent ACLU white paper expresses skepticism while cautioning against wider deployment. ...
by Sam Rutherford
The Court of Appeal of California, District 1, held that Cal. Penal Code § 3051 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution by denying youth offenders convicted of special circumstance murder predicated on robbery or burglary the right to a parole ...
by Sam Rutherford
According to an investigative report conducted by the Washington Post and follow-up reporting on TechDirt.com, police departments nationwide are hiding the fact that they are identifying criminal suspects using facial recognition software.
A Washington Post article reports that hundreds of Americans have been arrested after being connected ...
by David M. Reutter
The Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas held that a witness who covered a significant part of the expressive portion of her face with a surgical mask for her “comfort” constituted the denial of the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to fact-to-face confrontation.
The Court’s opinion was ...
Loaded on
Feb. 15, 2025
published in Criminal Legal News
March, 2025, page 49
Alaska: In a rare move, federal prosecutors asked an Alaska judge to vacate the 2019 assault conviction of long-time felon Johnny-Lee Preston Burk, citing a concealed relationship between the presiding judge and a prosecutor in the case. The Alaska Beacon reported that United States District Judge Joshua Kindred and prosecutor ...
by James Mills
In a world of theoretical experiments, it’s rare to find one that’s directly applicable for law enforcement in the real world. This may just be one of those rarities.
A recent study from Flinders University appears to show investigators where to seek the best DNA samples from ...
