by Michael Fortino, Ph.D.
You have been assigned to be a juror in each of the following cases, and your responsibility is to decide which of these guilty suspects is sane enough to qualify for the death penalty and which may be suffering from a mental health impairment that will ...
by Michael Fortino, Ph.D.
Blood Spatter Analysis (“BPA”) for years has been a state of the art, highly-sophisticated forensic consideration in determining the trajectory and origin of a crime scene gunshot, yet recent advancements in physics have now turned the science of blood spatter investigations “inside-out.” Following the study of ...
by Michael Fortino, Ph.D.
When we read about defendants receiving sentences of 117 years, 213 years, or even 743 years for non-violent offenses, the usual cliché is, “The system is broken,” a pessimistic little bromide one hears repeatedly in response to the perceived abuses by our criminal justice system. The ...
by Michael Fortino, Ph.D.
In South Carolina, if your career plan is to become a licensed barber, you will need to satisfy about 1,500 hours of coursework. However, in this same state, if you aspire to be a state court judge, you will find that a law degree, or any ...
by Michael Fortino, Ph.D.
Agents with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (“TBI”) and officers with the Dickson Police Department would be well advised to take the time to read the Constitution of the United States, namely the First Amendment. In January of this year, investigators from these departments teamed up ...
by Michael Fortino, Ph.D.
Fueled by a “moral panic” that evolved through the 1990s and into the mid-2000s, the war on “sex offenders” paralleled the war on drugs and was slated to eventually replace it as the drug war seemed to wane in popularity and success. Congress passed statutes and ...
by Michael Fortino, Ph.D.
The cause for incidents of police violence in recent years, particularly in the sequence of events that played out in the spring and summer of 2020, has been ascribed predominantly to systemic and implicit racism by law enforcement.
But it is possible that much broader and ...
by Michael Fortino, Ph.D.
American law has a system of checks and balances to keep corruption and wrongdoing by those in power from overwhelming the system. When it comes to police misconduct, it seems there is a double standard for prosecution.
Such checks and balances on the judicial front are ...
by Michael Fortino, Ph.D.
For nearly 123 years, police have enjoyed the privilege of organizing under various trade unions until recently when they began to be shunned by many of America’s larger labor organizations for violating the laborer’s sacred code of fair and impartial representation of the working class. According ...
by Michael Fortino, Ph.D.
With a global pandemic affecting nearly every aspect of traditional government operations, Syracuse University, in late spring of 2020, set out to evaluate the impact COVID-19 has had on the manpower and operations of our most active law enforcement agencies.
Much of this change ...
