by Matt Clarke
In 1931, a commission to investigate Prohibition-era corruption appointed by President Hoover issued the Wickersham Report. The report criticized the so-called Third Degree, which was the standard police interrogation technique of the time and involved beating a suspect until he or she confessed, then lying about the ...
by Matt Clarke
With little opposition from either party, the Texas Legislature passed HB 3391, authorizing the creation of the nation’s first public safety employees treatment courts. The courts will allow police, firefighters, prison and jail guards, and emergency medical services employees facing charges to defer criminal prosecution by entering ...
by Matt Clarke
The family of an intoxicated man abandoned by Delaware County, Ohio, sheriff’s deputies at a Taco Bell before he wandered onto a highway and was fatally struck by a vehicle has settled a lawsuit against the county and several sheriff’s department officials for $300,000.
After several motorists ...
by Matt Clarke
Wisconsin has a huge backlog of untested rape kits. In 2017, state Attorney General Brad Schimel estimated there were more than 6,300 untested rape kits. The number of rape kits involving allegations of child sexual abuse was 2,441 as of late 2017. A little under half of ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 27, 2017, the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas held that a judge must issue a jury charge on self-defense in a prosecution for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon even if the defendant’s version of events supporting self-defense is weak, contradicted, or not credible. ...
by Matt Clarke
In September 2017, the terms of a $4.8 million confidential settlement between the Kansas City Police Department and an unarmed man whom police officers shot 20 times were made public. The man had sued police for using excessive force in responding to the report of an alleged ...
by Matt Clarke
On July 19, 2017, the Maryland Office of the Public Defender released a video recording made by Baltimore Police Officer Richard Pinheiro's body-cam showing him planting drugs in a backyard then "discovering" them a few minutes later. Because of the video recording, a man who was held ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 4, 2017, prosecutors dropped criminal charges against two Harris County sheriff's deputies who publicly performed a body cavity search on a Black woman on June 20, 2015. This prompted her attorney, Sam Cammaack, to release a dash-cam video recording of the incident he calls "rape ...
