by Richard Resch
The Supreme Court of the United States held that a trial court’s jury instructions on the standard as to whether a private citizen owes a fiduciary duty to the public and a breach thereof may serve as the basis for a conviction for honest-services fraud …
by Richard Resch
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that police violated a defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights by conducting a warrantless search of his jacket that he tossed over the fence at his mother’s home as police were initiating contact because he did not …
by Richard Resch
The Supreme Court of the United States held that when a prisoner’s request for postconviction DNA testing of evidence in accordance with the process established by the state is denied and the prisoner files a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 procedural due process claim challenging the …
by Richard Resch
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that a suspect in a federal drug investigation who leased a condominium using a false name retained a subjective expectation of privacy in the premises that society recognizes as reasonable, and thus, the landlord could …
by Richard Resch
The Court of Appeal of California, Second Appellate District, held that a geofence warrant used to gather evidence in a homicide investigation that resulted in two murder convictions lacked the requisite particularity and was overbroad in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Nevertheless, the Court affirmed …
by Richard Resch
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit joined four of its sister Circuits in holding that U.S. Sentencing Guideline § 2K2.1(b)(4)(B) does not apply in cases where the firearm in question never had a serial number.
A Houston Police Department officer conducted …
by Richard Resch
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit vacated Jadnel Flores-Nater’s 30-year prison sentence containing a 20-year upward variance because the District Court failed to provide the required case-specific rationale to justify an upward variance of that magnitude.
On June 8, 2018, Flores-Nater …
by Richard Resch
In a case of first impression, the Supreme Court of Idaho held that police conducted a warrantless search of a vehicle when a drug-detection dog trespassed against personal property by placing his paws on the exterior of the vehicle and performed a free-air sniff in …
by Richard Resch
The Supreme Court of Vermont held that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy under the state Constitution in their real-time cell site location information (“CSLI”), and obtaining this information by police requires a warrant, unless a recognized exception to the warrant requirement applies.
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by Benjamin Tschirhart and Richard Resch
The tragic shootings of Black people by white police officers are a catalyst for national outrage. They are regular grist for the media mill across the country and rightly receive the attention of the public when they occur, as they do all …