by Jo Ellen Nott
An epidemic of police officers using excessive force in situations that do not require police brutality to subdue or arrest an individual in the United States has a gruesome death toll. In case after case, from Trayvon Martin in 2012 to Tamir Rice in …
by Jo Ellen Nott
In July 2022, the Virginia State Police paid $15,000 to purchase a subscription from Fog Data Service for its Fog Reveal tracking tool according to ABC 8 News in Richmond. Increasingly, law enforcement agencies across the county are using concealed cellphone tracking data to …
by Jo Ellen Nott
In January 2023, a Cook County Illinois judge vacated the wrongful conviction of Madeline Mendoza who served 17 years in prison for a murder she did not commit. On September 22, 1993, Mendoza pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to 35 years …
by Jo Ellen Nott
When five police officers were fired in Tennessee less than two weeks after brutally beating Tyré Nichols on January 7, 2023, and causing his death, the nation reacted with relief at the speed with which the Memphis Police Department took action. Experts in policing …
by Jo Ellen Nott
The U.S. Sentencing Commission is a government panel that formulates federal sentencing policy. On January 13, 2023, the commission made public proposed amendments to current federal sentencing guidelines and asked for comments. One amendment seeks to diminish judges’ controversial power to impose longer sentences …
by Jo Ellen Nott
In December, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit revisited the 2020 decision by the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah in which the lower court ruled that Utah State Trooper Blaine Robbins was entitled to qualified immunity for conducting …
by Jo Ellen Nott
On December 30, 2022, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that hundreds of prisoners who were convicted by non-unanimous juries have a right to a new trial. The rulings handed down on the last Friday of 2022 ended years of legal challenges in Oregon, after …
by Jo Ellen Nott
The City of Vallejo, California, agreed to pay Adrian L. Burrell $300,000 to settle an excessive force lawsuit brought after Officer David McLaughlin tackled him and smacked his head against a porch post of his home in January of 2019.
McLaughlin had pulled …
by Jo Ellen Nott
Edwin Davila’s first-degree murder conviction has been vacated after he was paroled in February of 2020. At the time of his release, Davila had spent 24 years wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of a teenager during a set-up gang retaliation shooting.
Following a …
by Jo Ellen Nott
On December 30, 2023, police arrested Bryan Christopher Kohberger at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania for the savage stabbing and murder of four University of Idaho students in November. Law enforcement sources report that DNA evidence obtained from a public genealogy database linked the …
