by Ed Lyon
The word ring has traditionally been used as a verb to describe what a bell does, whether it is mounted on a steeple or on the wall inside a residence. A product innovation by Amazon converts it to a trade name: Ring™.
The home security ...
by Ed Lyon
At present, it is believed that close to 20 million U.S. citizens are convicted felons. One of the many rights these citizens lost at conviction was jury service in federal courts. Twenty-seven states prohibit exes from jury service. Meanwhile, there are 22 states that do allow ...
by Ed Lyon
Human nature being what it is, since the need for an organized law enforcement body arose, police have generally been a necessary evil.
Judging from the seemingly countless articles detailing officer misconduct in Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News, police seem to be more ...
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 ...
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 Ed Lyon
Television crime dramas really do reflect reality when they show that one of the first things that occurs in an arrestee’s life is an arraignment. It is at this proceeding a judge hears whatever evidence the government’s and arrestee’s attorneys present, along with their arguments for a ...
by Ed Lyon
As reports of police abusing and even murdering citizens continues to rise over the years, databases of their misdeeds are emerging all over the U.S. These databases provide citizens with a great deal of transparency into these crimes that were formerly shrouded in secrecy by police ...
by Ed Lyon
In today’s world of technological marvels, electronic monitoring has far surpassed being useful merely to virtually imprison pretrial releasees and parolees. Nanotechnology has enabled parents to keep their children on an electronic tether while Big Brother sees a lot more than most people would ever believe — ...
by Ed Lyon
Peacefully sleeping the night away, grandmother Charlene Klein was rudely awakened by Allentown, Pennsylvania, cops beating on her door on May 2, 2016. A law-abiding citizen, she opened her front door in response to the Knights in Blue’s persistent pounding, only to find herself entering one ...
by Ed Lyon
Television crime dramas like Bones and CSI that depict sterile, efficient crime labs seem to be little more than good art imitating bad life as instance after instance of shoddy work and poor conditions from Wisconsin [CLN, March 2019, p.30] to Texas [CLN, March 2019 ...
