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Articles by Jo Ellen Nott

Police Departments’ Purchase of Tracking Tool Collecting Location Data Without a Warrant Raises Fourth Amendment Concerns

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 follow users’ ...

Illinois Town Will Pay $12 Million to Family After SWAT Officer Shot 12-Year-Old in Kneecap While Sitting on Bed With Hands Up

by Jo Ellen Nott

In early February of 2023, Al Holfeld, Jr., lawyer for Crystal Worship and her son Amir, announced that their federal civil rights lawsuit would be settled by the city of Richton Park, Illinois, for $12 million. The lawsuit arose from a 2019 SWAT raid on the ...

Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement Training Teaches Police Officers How to Intervene When Their Fellow Officers Use Excessive Force

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 2014 to ...

Madeline Mendoza Exonerated After Wrongful Conviction for Murder Engineered by Disgraced Former Chicago PD Detective Reynaldo Guevara

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 in prison ...

Body Cam Footage and Cellphone Videos Will Make the Quick Dismissals of Bad Police More Common

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 matters say ...

U.S. Sentencing Commission Seeks to Rein in Acquitted-Conduct Sentencing

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 based on ...

Tenth Circuit Reminds Cops That Conducting a Traffic Stop to Flirt With Motorist Is Not Okay

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 a bogus ...

Hundreds Convicted by Split Juries Will Have New Trials After Oregon Supreme Court Decision

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 the U.S. ...

Abusive Cop in Vallejo, California, Has Cost the Taxpayers More $500,000 in Settlements; Latest Brutality Victim Is a Marine Veteran and Stanford Grad

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 over Burrell’s cousin ...

Wrongful Conviction for First-Degree Murder Vacated 26 Years After Misconduct by Corrupt Chicago Detective Reynaldo Guevara Framed Him

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 shooting on West ...

 

 

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