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California Court of Appeal Announces Defendants May Obtain Brady Evidence From Police Officers’ Personnel Files in Advance of § 1172.6 Hearing Requesting Vacatur of Conviction and Resentencing for Certain Types of Murder Convictions by Sam Rutherford by Sam Rutherford The California Court of Appeal, Sixth District, held that defendants are …
‘Fictional Pleas’ and ‘Hidden Departures’: Failure to Collect Data on Binding Federal Plea Bargains Hinders Researchers by David Reutter by David M. Reutter Are federal courts participating in a legal fiction during sentencing proceedings to maintain a peculiar but potentially necessary mechanism to resolve criminal cases without a jury? That …
Article • April 15, 2024 • from CLN April, 2024
New York Governor Signs Law Sealing Millions of Criminal Records From Public View by Douglas Ankney by Douglas Ankney In late 2023, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed the Clean Slate Act into law, permitting millions of criminal convictions to be sealed. “With the signing of this law, it adds …
‘Silos’ Can Keep Police Departments From Knowledge of Extent of Police Abuse and Consequences of That Abuse by Matthew Clarke 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 …
Article • December 15, 2022 • from CLN January, 2023
Variability in Records Requests Obscures Police Use of Surveillance by Anthony Accurso by Anthony W. Accurso An effort by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (“EFF”) to track police use of surveillance technologies is butting up against the decentralized nature of our law enforcement networks in that open-records requests to different agencies …
Brief • September 16, 2022
Forsyth v. City of Rochester, NY, Notice of Entry and Order, Failure to Comply-FOIL Request, 2022 SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK COUNTY OF MONROE -----------------------------------------------------------------------X THEODORE FORSYTH, Index#: E2018007067 Petitioner, - against - NOTICE OF ENTRY & ORDER CITY OF ROCHESTER and ROCHESTER POLICE DEPARTMENT, Respondents. ------------------------------------------------------------------------X …
Article • May 15, 2022 • from CLN June, 2022
Idaho Supreme Court Announces Prospectively Testimony by Drug Recognition Expert Requires State to Comply With Expert Witness Disclosure Requirements of Rule 16(b)(7) by Douglas Ankney by Douglas Ankney The Supreme Court of Idaho announced, “that henceforth, testimony from drug recognition expert requires the state to comply with the expert witness …
FBI hiding an unpublished police use-of-force database from FOIA requesters by Brooke Kaufman by Brooke Kaufman  For years, the FBI has been collecting information from police departments on their use of force. “Lackluster participation” from law enforcement, however, has prevented the agency from publishing public reports or statistics based on …
Article • April 13, 2019
California Police Unions Balk at New Law Requiring Transparency in Officer-Involved Shootings and Use-of-Force Incidents by Chad Marks by Chad Marks California police unions are bringing their fight against a new transparency law -- Senate Bill 1421 -- to the courts, suing local governments in what looks like a losing …
Article • April 12, 2019 • from CLN May, 2019
Second Circuit: Government’s Misleading Disclosure Warrants New Trial by Douglas Ankney by Douglas Ankney The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the Government violated Rule 16 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure when its misleading disclosure caused the defense to forego filing a motion to …
Article • March 16, 2019 • from CLN April, 2019
Can Criminal Records Ever Truly Be Expunged in the Internet Era? by Matthew Clarke by Matt Clarke  Expunction of criminal records is a traditional method of protecting those falsely arrested, falsely convicted, or deemed deserving of a second chance after completing probation. But with the prevalence of mugshot sites and …
Article • February 15, 2019 • from CLN March, 2019
New California Laws Peel Back Secrecy Surrounding Police Discipline Amid Pushback by Betty Nelander by Betty Nelander The tide is changing on police accountability and transparency in California with the passage and signing of the California Records Act (“SB-1421”) and Assembly Bill 748. But SB-1421, which was scheduled to take …
Very Few Have Taken Advantage of New York’s Program to Seal Criminal Records by Edward Lyon by Ed Lyon Some of the lines to one of late country music singer Merle Haggard’s famous hit songs were about a “branded man, out in the cold.” He was lamenting that no one …
Article • December 29, 2018 • from CLN January, 2019
New Hampshire’s Secret List of Problematic Cops Gets Worse by Dale Chappell by Dale Chappell New Hampshire’s secret list of corrupt and problem cops just got worse. On April 30, Governor Chris Sununu and Attorney General Gordon MacDonald announced that individual cops won’t be placed on the list prior to …
Article • December 29, 2018 • from CLN January, 2019
Colorado Leads U.S. in Suppression of Court Cases by Kevin Bliss by Kevin Bliss The Denver Post reported that it had found a cache of suppressed court cases in Colorado. More than 6,700 cases, mostly criminal (including some involving violent felonies), had been restricted from public access since 2013. Many …
Article • December 5, 2018 • from CLN December, 2018
Under Fire, Long Beach Police Suspend Use of Self-Deleting Message App by Betty Nelander by Betty Nelander The TigerText app that permanently erases messages after a set time period has triggered controversy in Long Beach, California. There, the police department suspended use of it after its use was exposed by …
Article • November 6, 2018 • from CLN November, 2018
Judge orders Tacoma to pay fines, attorney fees over stingray records by Dale Chappell by Dale Chappell A Pierce County judge hit the City of Tacoma, Washington, with nearly $300,000 in fines and fees for violating the state’s Public Records Act (“PRA”), when it failed to turn over records on …
Publication • June 27, 2018
Sign-on letter in support of the Private Prison Information Act 2017 June 27, 2018 Re: Endorsement of the Private Prisons Information Act of 2017 Dear Senator: The undersigned organizations committed to government openness and accountability, civil liberties, human rights, and civil rights, write to urge you to support legislation to …
Article • December 22, 2017
Filed under: Disclosure of Records
Pennsylvania Police Motor Vehicle Recordings Not Exempt From Disclosure by Matthew Clarke by Matt Clarke On September 14, 2016, a Pennsylvania appellate court held that video and audio recordings made by police vehicles were not automatically exempt from disclosure under the Right-to-Know Law, 65 P.S. §67.101-76.3104 (RTKL) or the Criminal …
Brief • June 30, 2017
Stokes v. RealPage, PA, Criminal Record Expungement, 2017 Case 2:15-cv-01520-JP Document 51-2 Filed 06/30/17 Page 2 of 96 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA HELEN STOKES, on behalf of herself and all other similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. Case No. 2:15-cv-01520-JP REALPAGE, INC., Defendant. JAMES JENKINS, individually …
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