by Anthony W. Accurso
The forensic science known as Bloodstain Pattern Analysis (“BPA”)—a.k.a. blood spatter analysis—is undergoing significant development after being the object of intense criticism regarding its reliability in the context of criminal prosecutions. Despite being practiced for over 150 years, this field has undergone two periods of dramatic ...
by Jacob Barrett
Tennessee’s Rutherford County hasbeenunderscrutinyafteritwaswidelycriticizedforitsdysfunctional juvenilejusticesystem.TheCountyhasbeenincarceratingBlackchildrenatadisproportionatelyhighrate, accordingtodataobtainedbyProPublicaandNashvillePublicRadio(“NPR”).Themostrecentdatarevealthat theCounty’sincarcerationofBlackyouthisanextremedeparturefromnationaltrendsandtheCounty’sracial disparityisgettingworse,notbetter.
ProPublica and NPR documented how Rutherford County charged 11 Black children for a crime that did not exist. Four of the children were confined in the County’s juvenile jail.
Followingthepublicationofthestorybythetwonewsorganizations,theyreceivedadditionalreportsfromthe TennesseeCommissiononChildrenandYouththatexposedwhiletheCountywaslockingupsomanykids illegally,itwasalsoincarceratingadisproportionately highpercentageofBlackchildren.
RutherfordCountybooked childrenintoitsjuvenilejailatleast6,350timesbetweenJuly2010andJune2021, accordingtotheyouthcommissionsmonitoringreports.Thirty-eightpercentofthosewereBlackchildren.That percentageistroublinginlightofthefactBlackchildrenonlymakeup onlyabout16%ofchildreninthe County. ...
by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead, The Rutherford Institute
“The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes.”—Thomas Paine
The government wants your money.It will beg, steal or borrow if necessary, but it wants your money any way it can get it.
The government’s schemes ...
The Court of Appeal of California, Sixth Appellate District, held the trial court erred by admitting incriminating post-Miranda statements obtained through the use of pre-Miranda statements in a deliberate strategy to circumvent Miranda through the use of a two-step interrogation in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. ...
by Dale Chappell
Waiting more than four years for a Wisconsin state court to hear a defendant’s appeal was “ineffective to protect the rights secured by the United States Constitution,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled, allowing a federal habeas corpus petition to proceed without exhausting ...
by Dale Chappell
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that trial counsel’s failure to obtain a mental health expert and psychological testing constituted ineffective assistance of counsel (“IAC”), rendering the death-penalty sentences invalid. The Court reversed the denial of habeas corpus relief and instructed the U.S. ...
by Matt Clarke
The Supreme Court of Hawaii held that a trial court erred by excluding evidence of the victim’s blood alcohol concentration (“BAC”) in a first-degree assault case where the defendant claimed self-defense.
During a family gathering involving a day of drinking, Peter David and his cousin, Santhony Albert, ...
by Matt Clarke
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio erred when it failed to consider a change in sentencing law announced in United States v. Havis, 927 F.3d 382 (6th Cir. 2019) (“attempted” controlled ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Court of Appeals of Maryland affirmed a decision of the Court of Special Appeals (“CSA”) that held a defendant’s acceptance of a jury as empaneled did not waive his earlier objection to a trial court’s denial of the defendant’s request to propound a proposed voir dire ...
Procedural Deficiencies in Cause of Death Reporting Systems Cause Extensive Underreporting of Fatal Police Violence
by Casey J. Bastian
Our nation is experiencing a recent period of forced enlightenment. The scope of violent or fatal encounters with American law enforcement is now considered by many experts to qualify as a ...
Robot Dogs, Lethal Autonomous Weapons, and the Dawn of Robo-dystopia
by J.D. Schmidt
Back in 1942 when science fiction author Isaac Asimov introduced his “Three Laws of Robotics” in a short story, he was imagining how we could grapple with some of the problems that might arise as human beings ...
by Douglas Ankney
Two police officers from Gowanda, New York—Sean Hotnich and Richard Cooper—claimed they got several “key details” wrong in their affidavit supporting a search warrant, as well as in their police report. For example, the police report states that once the two officers entered David Yezek’s kitchen, “patrol ...
by Richard Resch
In a 9-0 opinion delivered by Justice Kagan, the Supreme Court of the United States held that defendant’s 10 burglary convictions for burglarizing 10 separate storage units all located within the same building constituted a single “occasion,” not 10, for purposes of the Armed Career Criminal Act ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Supreme Court of Kentucky upheld the decision of a trial court that found a single officer asking questions of the defendant in a public area amounted to an unlawful seizure because the defendant had a history of being arrested by that particular officer so he reasonably ...
by Matt Clarke
The Supreme Court of Connecticut held that a trial court erred when it limited the testimony of a self-represented defendant in a trial for injury to a child. The testimony at issue would have explained why the defendant felt it necessary to physically drag his daughter to ...
by Dale Chappell
Finding that defense counsel’s failure to interview the State’s key eyewitness in a Louisiana murder case constituted ineffective assistance of counsel under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the U.S. District Court for the Middle ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Court of Minnesota announced that Minn. Stat. § 634.03 (2020) requires a defendant’s confession to be corroborated by independent evidence reasonably tending to prove that the specific offense charged has been committed.
During a police interview, Bryan Morgan Holl confessed to several incidents of sexually ...
A Closer Look at How Police Departments Resist Reform From Within Their Ranks
by Jayson Hawkins
The last few years have seen a growing awareness of systemic problems in the way American police operate. Efforts to reform the system have been stymied by a number of factors, including the racial ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Court of Appeal of California, Third Appellate District, reversed a trial court’s denial of a motion for a new trial, ruling that jurors committed misconduct by considering the possible penalties during the guilt phase of Michael Anthony Flores’ trial.
Flores was tried on several charges, including ...
by Matt Clarke
In a case of first impression, the Supreme Court of Colorado announced that when calculating financial means to hire an attorney in determining whether a defendant is indigent and thus entitled to court-appointed counsel the parents’ income in a joint household is excluded from the indigency calculation ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Arecently-obtained document sheds light on how an FBI special team obtains data from cellular providers to provide support for FBI, tribal, and local law enforcement investigations, including what data they can obtain and how long each provider stores that data.
Ryan N. Shapiro of the nonprofit ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Supreme Court of Vermontruled that, given the totality of circumstances, a police interview with a defendant was custodial and thereby triggered the requirement for Miranda warnings where, among other factors, two police officers sought out the defendant, asked her to exit the store in which ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
One police tactic that is quickly gaining traction involves surveilling social media posts on sites like Facebook and Twitter, but Facebook (now Meta) is reminding police that fake (or “dummy”) accounts are not allowed.
Police have always been allowed to view public posts by Facebook users, ...
by Ashleigh Dye
Drones produced by a Chinese company, Da Jiang Innovations (“DJI”), have been under scrutiny by the U.S. government for being a potential threat to national security. These same drones however, are being used by The New York City Police Department (“NYPD”).
The NYPD stated that the drones ...
by Douglas Ankney
According to data obtained by the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (“LASD”) is targeting Latino bicyclists with pretextual stops. Since the bicyclists are on their vehicles—rather than in their vehicles—the stops are analogous to Terry stops (from Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. ...
Loaded on
May 1, 2022
published in Criminal Legal News
May, 2022, page 50
Arkansas: A former police officer in Lonoke County was convicted on March 18, 2022, in the killing of a white teenager reports Courthouse News Service. The former sheriff’s deputy, Michael Davis, was acquitted of a manslaughter charge but convicted on a misdemeanor charge in connection with the shooting of ...
by Douglas Ankney
In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice reported that officers from the Narcotics Unit of the Springfield Police Department in Massachusetts engaged “in a pattern or practice of excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution.” The report identified evidence showing officers ...
