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Criminal Law

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Criminal law resources, information, and news for the academic community.

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Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 16:40:00

Police prepare for changes in marijuana possession laws

Posted on November 27, 2008
Local law enforcement officials are still in a haze about Question 2 as it winds its way through the bureaucratic process. There are a number of logistical issues that stand between the ballot initiative that would decriminalize the possession of...

Temple case still haunting

Posted on November 27, 2008
For nearly eight weeks in the late spring and summer of 1993, he was Juror No. 3 in the trial of a young man accused of the worse mass murder in Arizona history. When deliberations ended on July 13, the...

Neighbor Guilty in MySpace Hoax Case

Posted on November 27, 2008
A suburban mother was found guilty today of minor misdemeanor charges for her role in an online hoax that prosecutors said led to the suicide of her teenage neighbor. Lori Drew, 49, was convicted on three misdemeanor counts of unauthorized...

Judges stay Dec. 3 execution of Wash. inmate

Posted on November 26, 2008
Federal and state judges have indefinitely delayed the scheduled Dec. 3 execution of Darold Stenson for the 1993 shooting deaths of his wife and a business partner in Clallam County. The separate stays were issued Tuesday by judges in federal...

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Complaint filed over Long Island police policies

Posted on November 26, 2008
Hispanic advocates claimed Tuesday that the Long Island police department that investigated the killing of an Ecuadorean immigrant fails to adequately investigate crimes committed by whites against Latinos. In a complaint to the U.S. Justice Department, the national advocacy group...

In Cities, the Fight Against Terrorism Walks the Beat

Posted on November 26, 2008
In May, a Los Angeles Police Department motorcycle officer stopped a car for speeding. He noticed that the driver was sweating and gripping the steering wheel nervously, while refusing to answer basic questions. In May, a Los Angeles Police Department...

Criminal justice affected by budget cut

Posted on November 25, 2008
Due to a projected $90 million shortfall for 2009 in the King County General Fund, criminal justice agencies in the county are experiencing a blanket 11.4 percent budget cut. The budget cut has caused a change in filing and disposition...

Tracing a crime suspect through a relative

Posted on November 25, 2008
Over nearly two decades, a serial killer has shot and strangled at least 11 people, often dumping their battered bodies in alleyways of Inglewood and Los Angeles. Most were black women or girls, the youngest just 14. The latest was...

Butchering Statutes: the Postville Raid and the Misinterpretation of Federal Law

Posted on November 25, 2008
On Monday, May 12, 2008, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement led an immigration raid at the Agriprocessors, Inc. meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. The local U.S. Attorney's Office pursued criminal complaints against approximately 300 migrant workers...

2nd Circuit Upholds Warrantless Extraterritorial Searches of U.S. Citizens

Posted on November 24, 2008
A federal appeals court in Manhattan upheld the convictions on Monday of three Al Qaeda operatives in a ruling that bolsters the government?s power to investigate terrorism by holding that a key Constitutional protection afforded to Americans does not apply...

Georgia Supreme Court Promotes Marriage to Fight Crime

Posted on November 24, 2008
A dozen billboards around the state that urge Georgians to "Get Married, Stay Married" are sponsored not by a church or family-values group but by the Supreme Court of Georgia through its Commission on Children, Marriage and Family Law. Chief...

Budget cuts hamper abilities of prosecutors across U.S.

Posted on November 24, 2008
A sour economy is forcing sharp cuts in law-and-order budgets, district attorneys say, hampering their ability to prosecute criminals and secure appropriate sentences for some types of crimes. The cuts include treating drug-related felony crimes as misdemeanors, dismantling specialty units...

Experts: Bad Economies Don't Cause Crime Waves

Posted on November 24, 2008
There are few outlaws in the United States as famous as Bonnie and Clyde ? a young couple, with no jobs or prospects, driving across the country robbing banks and killing police officers to make ends meet during the Great...

Boy's constitutional rights forgotten during interview

Posted on November 24, 2008
The video of the now-infamous 8-year-old in St. Johns is chilling. "Did you shoot your dad?" a sheriff's deputy asks the pajama-clad boy, at the end of an hourlong interview in which he was led ever-so-gently down the primrose path....

Professor Hoffman Criminal Law Professor

Posted on November 23, 2008
Professor Hoffmann is an award-winning scholar and law teacher. He holds the Harry Pratter Professorship, and is a past recipient of the Law School Gavel Award and the university-wide Outstanding Young Faculty Award. In addition to courses in criminal law...

'Ionia' Challenge to Corporate Criminal Liability

Posted on November 22, 2008
Mark Twain once reportedly observed that "everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it." The same could be said of corporate criminal liability. In recent years, the corporate defense bar has frequently complained about the low threshold...

From Justice Stevens, No Exit Signs

Posted on November 21, 2008
For all the speculation about how President-elect Barack Obama's nominees may change the Supreme Court, there is one irrefutable fact: He can't make an appointment until there is a vacancy. Eighty-eight-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens, the court's longest-serving member, is...

APD Among Texas Police Agencies With Poor Eyewitness ID Procedures

Posted on November 21, 2008
The Austin Police Department "meets the minimum legal requirements" for the administration of live and photo lineups of criminal suspects, but "does little to ensure that its lineup procedures provide the best evidence possible in any given case," according to...

Experts: Interrogation of boy, 8, 'out of bounds'

Posted on November 21, 2008
The third-grader's legs dangle at times from an overstuffed chair as he answers the questions of two female police officers. His manner and voice are casual, even helpful, but his words are shocking. And so, legal analysts say, were the...

Borderless Drug Wars

Posted on November 20, 2008
The drug violence that has left nearly 4,000 people dead this year in Mexico is spreading deep into the United States, leaving a trail of slayings, kidnappings and other crimes in at least 195 cities as far afield as Atlanta,...

Hearing Slated for Boy Charged with Fatally Shooting Dad

Posted on November 20, 2008
A court hearing is scheduled Wednesday afternoon for an 8-year-old boy accused of shooting his father and another man in rural Arizona. A dramatic police videotape released Tuesday shows a tearful boy in St. Johns, Ariz., confessing to murder, then...

Why Is Cuban Facing a Fine When Martha Faced the Slammer?

Posted on November 20, 2008
With Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban facing civil insider-trading charges (PDF) from the SEC, we got to wondering what it takes for securities fraud to become a crime. The short answer: It depends on the prosecutor. The SEC does not...

An Electronic Witness

Posted on November 19, 2008
When Jason Jones was arrested in a fatal shooting in the Bronx in May, he told the police that he had been nowhere near the scene. He said he had left work, ridden the bus with some co-workers and cashed...

New Immigration Regulation Eased After Firms Complain

Posted on November 19, 2008
In a concession to business groups, the Homeland Security Department will significantly scale back its planned crackdown this winter on federal contractors that hire illegal immigrants. Under a rule published yesterday, the agency said only contractors that do more than...

Charlotte's DNA backlog slows effort to solve crimes

Posted on November 19, 2008
Evidence with the potential to solve or provide leads on hundreds of burglary and robbery cases awaits DNA testing as Charlotte-Mecklenburg police grapple with a backlog. Testing is still a top priority for murder, rape and habitual offender cases. And...

TSA's 'behavior detection' leads to few arrests

Posted on November 19, 2008
Fewer than 1% of airline passengers singled out at airports for suspicious behavior are arrested, Transportation Security Administration figures show, raising complaints that too many innocent people are stopped. A TSA program launched in early 2006 that looks for terrorists...

When a Gun Isn't a Gun?

Posted on November 18, 2008
U.S. attorneys had a conundrum on their hands -- they had the evidence to prove a convicted felon was in possession of a gun, but they couldn?t prove the gun was a gun. What attorney?s had on their hands was...

Ninth Circuit Holds CA Child Abuse Index Violates Due Process

Posted on November 18, 2008
California's Child Abuse Central Index, a database of known or suspected child abusers, violates procedural due process in failing to give listed persons a fair opportunity to challenge the allegations against them and obtain delisting, the U.S. Court of Appeals...

Tenth Circuit's Construction Narrows Federal Sex Offender Registry Law

Posted on November 18, 2008
The provision of the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act that makes it a crime to travel interstate and fail to register as a sex offender does not apply to someone whose travel was complete before the law went...

LAPD's Fingerprint Lab Isn't Up to the Task

Posted on November 18, 2008
Late on the morning of April 14, 2006, a troubling letter rolled off the fax machine in the harried, disordered fingerprint unit of the Los Angeles Police Department. Months before, one of the unit's print specialists had determined that several...

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