by Christopher Zoukis
Law enforcement agencies nationwide are employing technology, designed for military use in foreign lands, in order to track the location of U.S. citizens on American soil. And authorities — all the way up to the FBI — have gone to great lengths to hide the surveillance system ...
by Richard Resch
On April 17, 2018, the Supreme Court of the United States (“SCOTUS”) issued an opinion in which it instructed that federal courts are required to “look through” an unexplained decision of the last state court to rule on the merits of a state habeas petition to the ...
by Michael Avery
Protests by tens of thousands of Americans, black and white, have urged us to remember that Black Lives Matter. The movement is an outgrowth of concern over the epidemic of police violence against black people. But the issue of whether black lives matter as much as white ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 27, 2017, the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas held that a guilty plea for obtaining a controlled substance “through the use of a fraudulent prescription form” was invalid because it was given as a result of deficient legal advice from defendant’s attorney who failed ...
by Dale Chappell
Evidence retrieved from a purse unlawfully removed from a vehicle after an arrest violated the Fourth Amendment, despite the existence of a police department policy allowing the search of the purse under the circumstances, the Supreme Court of Ohio held on January 16, 2018.
When an Ohio ...
by Christopher Zoukis
Corruption in the Philadelphia Police Department led local prosecutors to prepare a list of cops who had engaged in misconduct, including excessive force, drinking on duty, and lying to investigators. The list contains 66 names and was referred to by prosecutors as the “Do Not Call” list ...
by Steve Horn
Jefferson County, the most populous county in Alabama, reached a Resolution Agreement on April 6 with the U.S. Department of Justice and the group Equal Justice Under Law in response to a complaint brought by the group alleging that the County court system’s bail policy violated Title ...
by Richard Resch
In an opinion issued on April 4, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the suppression of evidence ostensibly obtained pursuant to an anticipatory search warrant where the triggering event never occurred.
This case was set in motion when a police dog alerted ...
by Dale Chappell
The Supreme Court of South Carolina found that counsel’s advice to a defendant to take a plea deal to avoid the State’s threat to use a new, harsher sentencing law if he refused to plead guilty was “clearly deficient.” Therefore, the Court reversed the post-conviction relief court’s ...
by Matt Clarke
On October 5, 2017, the Supreme Court of New Mexico held that an impaired driver generally could not be subject to criminal penalties for refusing to submit to a blood test for the presence of alcohol or drugs.
On April 23, 2011, Laressa Vargas encountered a DWI ...
by Dale Chappell
Cops in this country kill so many dogs each year that a specialist at the Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) community-oriented program services office says it has become an “epidemic.” The DOJ estimates that around 25 to 30 dogs are killed by cops every day, with some numbers ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled on March 15, 2018, that a claim for prosecutorial misconduct, brought by a wrongfully convicted defendant, does not accrue for statute of limitations purposes when the conviction is vacated, but when the criminal proceedings are terminated. ...
by Matt Clarke
The transcript of a panel discussion titled “Life After the Death Penalty: Implications for Retentionist States,” presented by the Committees on Capital Punishment of the American Bar Association Section of Civil Rights & Social Justice and the New York City Bar Association, which was posted on the ...
by Matt Clarke
On March 6, 2018, the Supreme Court of Ohio held that the State must provide a prisoner the DNA profile created after his application for post-conviction DNA testing of crime-scene evidence was granted.
Tyrone Noling received the death penalty for the 1990 murder of an Ohio couple. ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled on January 29, 2018, that California’s carjacking law, Penal Code § 215(a), no longer constitutes a crime of violence under 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(F) in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Johnson v. United ...
by Derek Gilna
The launch of the Henry A. Wallace Police Crime Database in September of 2017 puts at the public’s disposal, through a simple web search, all crimes committed by non-federal sworn police officers. The database contains information on the 8,006 criminal arrests of 6,596 officers from 2005 to ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The Supreme Court of Minnesota ruled that a convicted defendant is entitled to appointed counsel, pursuant to statute, for one review of his or her conviction—even if that review is on a petition for postconviction relief, as opposed to a direct appeal. The Court’s January 24, 2018 ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The number of death row sentences handed out across the country is in decline. Despite this trend, death rows remain crowded. This is the result of a similar, but somewhat unrelated shift: Executions are also in a state of free fall. In fact, there were fewer executions ...
by Dale Chappell
“Entry of judgment” for purposes of a motion for new trial under Criminal Procedure Rule 33(c) means the finding of guilt and the imposition of a sentence, the Colorado Supreme Court held on January 22, 2018, finding a defendant’s motion for new trial was timely filed.
Fifteen ...
by David Reutter
The Supreme Court of Vermont held that the State may not compel a defendant to submit to a competency evaluation conducted by a mental-health expert of the State’s choosing after a court-ordered competency evaluation by a neutral mental-health expert.
Following his arrest for second-degree murder, Christopher Sharrow’s ...
by Dale Chappell
The Supreme Court of California granted a writ of habeas corpus and vacated a first-degree murder conviction and death sentence after several of the experts who testified at trial recanted their testimony over 25 years later.
Vincent Benavides was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death ...
by Richard Resch
In an April 12, 2018 opinion, the Supreme Court of Florida announced that a statute of limitations (“SOL”) defense must be raised in the trial court in order to preserve the issue for direct appeal.
In 2011, DNA evidence linked Earvin Smith to a home invasion and ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The Supreme Court of New Mexico reversed a defendant’s convictions for shooting at a dwelling resulting in death or great bodily harm and conspiracy to shoot at a dwelling based on a violation of the Double Jeopardy Clause contained in the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. ...
by Dale Chappell
The change of a single word in Virginia’s actual innocence statute “fundamentally changed the nature” of actual innocence inquiries, the Supreme Court of Virginia announced, finding a petitioner proved his actual innocence under the revised statute.
In 1978, Roy Watford pleaded guilty to the rape of a ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 14, 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed the portion of the sentence that restricted a former Realtor who had pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud from working in real estate for five years following his release from prison. ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The Court of Appeal of California, Fourth Appellate District, Division Two reversed a trial court’s imposition of a gang enhancement on a defendant when the evidence of gang activity consisted almost entirely of hearsay relied upon by an expert witness. The January 23, 2018, opinion affirmed the ...
by Dale Chappell
In an issue of first impression for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, the Court clarified when a district court must hold a resentencing hearing, rather than summarily “correcting” a sentence, when granting relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255.
In the wake of courts ...
by Dale Chappell
In a case of first impression, the Supreme Court of Colorado held February 5, 2018, that a party seeking to invoke the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege must demonstrate “probable cause” that a crime or fraud is being committed by the client’s communications with his or ...
by Dale Chappell
Providing a lesson on what defense lawyers should and should not do to get their client a lower sentence, the Supreme Court of Delaware held that counsel was ineffective when he met with his client for the first time just minutes before sentencing and did not coach ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed a defendant’s conviction for transporting an illegal alien for financial gain because the district court improperly instructed the jury on the mens rea element of the crime. The January 30, 2018, opinion sent the case back ...
by Dale Chappell
In a case of first impression before the Supreme Court of Wyoming, the Court held that a cohabitant who attacks another cohabitant in their shared home may raise the “castle doctrine” in a self-defense argument, defending her use of force to protect herself from the other cohabitant. ...
by Derek Gilna
A man who was wrongfully accused, convicted, and imprisoned because of the alleged misconduct of four San Francisco police officers who fabricated and withheld evidence to frame him for a 2007 murder, has been awarded $10 million by a federal jury.
Jamal Trulove had been accused of ...
by Dale Chappell
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania made it clear: “If a member of law enforcement wishes to obtain information from a cellphone, get a warrant.” The Court held that turning on, as well as digging into a cellphone to obtain its number, constituted a search each that required ...
by Richard Resch
In a February 28, 2018, opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that U.S. District Courts may not base a revocation of supervised release upon violations that (1) were not alleged prior to the expiration of the supervisory period and (2) are not ...
by Steve Horn
The use of DNA-based genealogy websites to track down Joseph DeAngelo — the “Golden State Killer” suspect — appears to have inspired police departments nationwide. It’s a move that has irked privacy advocates and criminal justice system reformers.
DeAngelo, a former police officer and alleged serial killer in the 1970s ...
by Matt Clarke
On March 2, 2018, the Supreme Court of Idaho vacated a prisoner’s conviction and sentence for possession of a controlled substance and ordered an acquittal because the substance she possessed had not been adequately identified as a controlled substance beyond a reasonable doubt.
Gracie Jean Tryon, an ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reversed a lower court’s decision to deny a motion to suppress because the search that led to the discovery of illegal materials lacked probable cause. The December 28, 2017, opinion sent the case back to the district ...
Loaded on
June 18, 2018
published in Criminal Legal News
July, 2018, page 42
California: The family of a mentally ill man who was shot and killed in 2014 by Lodi, California, police officers Scott Bratton and Adam Lockie settled with the city for $2.65 million on April 24, 2018, after U.S. District Court Judge Troy Nunley denied the city’s efforts to dismiss the ...
