by Anthony W. Accurso
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” and requires that warrants be issued only “upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing ...
by James A. Lockhart and Luke E. Sommer
In the relatively short history of compassionate release motions filed by prisoners, courts have consistently found that rehabilitation is an important element in determining whether or not relief is appropriate. See United States v. Johnson, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 129168 (D.D.C. ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
On April 25, 2023, the Virginia Supreme Court issued an order refusing to hear the case of Michael L. Ledford, a man who was convicted of arson and first-degree murder in September 2000 when he was just 23 years old and the father of a baby ...
by Jordan Arizmendi
Abody farm is often an indispensable tool for investigators. A body farm is a facility that focuses on the details of human decomposition. Such an essential tool allows forensic scientists to study the decomposition process in a controlled environment. In many cases, body farms are the only way ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
Most of us would feel violated to learn that our spouse or partner had been digging through our phone. Imagine if they were to use that access to determine where we have been and who we have been near and then to gain access to our ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
AI is having its moment. And though
much of what has been slapped with the AI label is generally a far cry from the large language models you may have experienced at Bing and Google, it can still be terrifying. These new generations of tools are ...
by Richard Resch
The Supreme Court of Wyoming reversed Myron Martize Woods’ conviction for interference with a peace officer because the arresting officers’ warrantless entry into his home, without any applicable exception, meant that they were acting unlawfully in effectuating his arrest, but an “elemental” requirement of this offense is ...
by Anthony W Accurso
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit required suppression of evidence based upon a warrant for evidence related to a structure fire where the government failed to establish probable cause to believe the fire was caused by arson or otherwise the result of criminal ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
A research project in Arizona seeks to develop support for a method of determining time of death by cataloging information about blowfly species.
The gases emitted by a corpse can attract nearby blowflies to colonize and help break down a body. While blowflies will get to ...
by Douglas Ankney
The California Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District, reversed Dwayne Lamont Burgess’ felony murder conviction because the evidence was insufficient to support the underlying predicate felony of attempted robbery.
In December 1990, Burgess was a participant in a crime that ended in the death of a drug ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
The reduction of biases in criminal justice is an ongoing problem that does not lend itself to easy solutions. Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) may one day be that solution, though Boston University associate professor of law and assistant professor of computing and data sciences Ngozi Okidegbi points ...
by Jordan Arizmendi
Part of an omnibus bill, Minnesota recently placed a five-year cap on probation. Any Minnesotan serving probation sentences longer than five years is now eligible for resentencing. Before this legislation, Minnesota law allowed probation sentences to be as long as the maximum sentence one could get for ...
by Carlos Difundo
It is a trope of the modern spy thriller. A drone flies overhead and captures a fleeting glimpse of some person of interest. The image begins as a pixelated blur from far above. Someone yells, “Enhance the image,” and it resolves into a high-quality profile that is ...
by Douglas Ankney
The New York Court of Appeals held that until the jury returns to the courtroom and publicly announces and confirms the verdict, the defendant is still presumed innocent, so the constitutional prohibition on restraining a defendant without explanation remains in force.
Oscar Sanders was tried by jury ...
by Douglas Ankney
Gersh Kuntzman, editor of Streetsblog, spent the first quarter of 2023 documenting New York Police Department (“NYPD”) officers who defaced their license plates, making the plates unreadable to the city’s speed, red-light, and bus-lane violation cameras. The results of the investigations into his complaints reveal none of ...
by Jordan Arizmendi
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld a ruling concluding that between 2011 and 2019, breathalyzers used by the government were improperly calibrated and maintained. Commonwealth v. Hallinan, 207 N.E.3d 465 (Mass. 2023). More astonishingly, according to the opinion, because of government misconduct, an estimated 27,000 ...
by Jordan Arizmendi
On June 30, 2022, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York City Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Jason Graham announced the creation of the specialized Office of the Chief Medical Examiner’s (“OCME”) DNA Gun Crimes Unit. One year later, it became the fastest big city lab ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
Within the past several decades, police have acquired a new tool so secretive that prosecutors were told to either plea out cases or repress evidence rather than permit the public to know about them. Much to the chagrin of the courts, that secrecy extended even unto ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated two 18 U.S.C. § 924 convictions that were predicated on attempted Hobbs Act robbery because attempted Hobbs Act robbery is not categorically a crime of violence.
In 2018, Dwaine Collymore pleaded guilty to four counts, viz., conspiracy ...
by Jordan Arizmendi
Few events are more horrific than sudden infant death syndrome (“SIDS”). A boisterous and healthy baby, before their first birthday, goes to sleep in their crib and is found dead the next day. To compound the tragedy, parents and caretakers are sometimes criminally charged for the death. ...
by Jordan Arizmendi
Last February, WDTN reported that
Dayton, Ohio, City Commission members, voted to approve installation of the Fusus network. When the system is set up, a 911 call will automatically identify cameras in the area that have a live feed. As a result, police officers could get a ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
Corporations have turned cellphones into mobile snooping devices that monetize consumer habits and daily activity. A new service, Pretty Good Phone Privacy (“PGPP”), addresses some of the privacy concerns built into the cellular system.
The problem comes down to the architecture of the cellular networks, which were ...
by Jordan Arizmendi
In April 2023, the Mississippi Supreme Court unanimously amended the state’s Rules of Criminal Procedure to eliminate the “dead zone.” Essentially, Rule 7.2 of Mississippi declares that counsel must be provided to an indigent defendant after they have been indicted. In re Miss. Rules of Crim. Procedure ...
by Jordan Arizmendi
The method that law-enforcement agencies use to test a suspect’s DNA is currently undergoing the most significant transformation in the science’s history. New Rapid DNA technology can develop an individual’s DNA profile in one to two hours. The machine can test skin, hair, DNA swabs, blood, saliva, ...
by Jordan Arizmendi
Upon reading the Justice Policy Institute report entitled “Safe at Home: Improving Maryland’s Parole Release Decision Making,” the first look at Maryland’s parole system in excess of 80 years, one disturbing trend is that the rate at which the Maryland Parole Commission approves parole sharply declines for ...
by Jordan Arizmendi
Move over Terminator, the newest crop of law enforcement agents are New York City’s futuristic robots that have been given the beat of Times Square as well as the city subways.
This is not the first time that NYPD has allowed robots to perform gritty police work. ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Court of California held that after amendments to the Three Strikes law, trial courts retain the concurrent sentencing discretion that was first enunciated in People v. Hendrix, 941 P.2d 64 (Cal. 1997), when sentencing on qualifying offenses committed on the same occasion or arising from ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Court of Appeals of New York ordered the suppression of a jail recording where it was derived from a wiretap and the People failed to provide the required statutory notice to the defendant under CPL 700.70.
Syracuse police were investigating a fatal hit-and-run automobile accident ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the denial of a defendant’s suppression motion where he failed to invoke his Fifth Amendment protections while on post-release supervision and instead provided statements which led to a new charge.
Eugene Reid Linville was on supervised ...
by Anthony W Accurso
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that Wisconsin courts denied a defendant his Sixth Amendment right to counsel by failing to appoint counsel until after he had been ordered detained by a magistrate and required to participate in an in-person lineup – ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit weighed in on the ongoing Circuit split of whether a “bump stock” – placement of which on a semiautomatic rifle enables it to function essentially like a machinegun the possession of which is a criminal offense – ...
by Anthony W Accurso
The Supreme Court of New Jersey held that a third party, with property in a storage trailer shared with the defendant, had apparent authority to authorize a search of the trailer but not a search of a bag belonging to the defendant in which the third ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
Travis County is in Central Texas, 150 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico. The city of Austin, the state capital and county seat, sits at the intersection of three major highways. Its population in 2021 was 1.305 million. The Travis County Jail shares a problem ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that second-degree aggravated assault of a protected individual in violation of 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 2702(a)(3) is not a “violent felony,” for purposes of the Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”), reversing a defendant’s sentence enhanced thereunder. ...
by Douglas Ankney
Vehement opposition by law enforcement stopped the passage of a 2022 Colorado bill that would have banned police from lying to juvenile suspects while attempting to extract confessions. Lawmakers projecting a “tough on crime” image called the bill “anti-law enforcement” and “pro-criminal.” But mounting evidence proves that ...
by Matt Clarke
The Supreme Court of Colorado clarified that there is no per se rule excluding self-serving hearsay by a criminal defendant, holding that “like any other hearsay statement, a defendant’s self-serving hearsay statement may be admissible if it satisfies a hearsay-rule exception in the Colorado Rules of Evidence ...
by Casey J. Bastian
The Innocence Project (“IP”) and the National Registry of Exonerations (“NRE”) each keep track of and list wrongful convictions. Each also works to identify the causes of those wrongful convictions and how forensic science-related errors is considered an “influential factor” in many of these injustices. When ...
by Jordan Arizmendi
At the end of June 2023, Montana Governor Greg Gianforte signed a bill, Senate Bill 397 (“SB397”) that will ban warrantless facial recognition surveillance, generally. According to the law, the exceptions that would permit a law enforcement agency to perform a facial recognition search include: if probable ...
Loaded on
Sept. 1, 2023
published in Criminal Legal News
September, 2023, page 50
California: Reported by KHSL in Chico/Redding, Nicholas Lee Rush, 49, a Chico Police Officer, has been charged with providing marijuana to an underage family member, 17, and also encouraging the teen to share the stash with his girlfriend. In 2022, an investigation into whether Rush was growing pot in his ...
by Matt Clarke
Around two decades ago, UCLA law professor Joanna Stewart was a civil rights attorney working on a large class-action lawsuit against the New York City Department of Corrections. While interviewing guards, she was surprised to learn that they did not know how many times they had been ...
