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Criminal Law

Kansas Federal Defender

Coverage of the 10th Circuit, sentencing rulings and content relevant to public defenders.
By Melody Evans and Kirk Redmond

Post Frequency: 0.6/day

Last Entry: May 10, 2013 at 18:06:00

Getting the Justice Systems We Deserve

Posted on May 10, 2013
By: Andrew Cohen Brennan Center for Justice May 6, 2013 A remarkable thing happened on Wednesday in Nashville, Tennessee. A federal trial judge there, Todd J. Campbell, issued two orders in a criminal case candidly confronted the "sequester's" impact on the rule of law...

What Search Warrant?

Posted on May 10, 2013
What Search Warrant? Your Facebook Messages And Private Emails Are Not Safe From FBI Surveillance, Says ACLU May 10, 2013 Christopher Zara, International Business Times Warrants? We don?t need no stinking warrants. According to new documents obtained by the ACLU, government officials may not always obtain warrants when they snoop through our emails, Facebook messages, and other electronic

The Injustice of Mandatory Minimums

Posted on April 30, 2013
When crime was rising back in the 1970s, federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws became a nifty way for officeholders to burnish their obligatory tough-on-crime creds. Today, street crime is way down - perhaps in part because of stiff minimum sentences...

Mandatory Sentencing Pre-Empts Individual Consideration

Posted on April 05, 2013
By Sen. Paul Rand, Special to the Washington Times I, like anyone else, whether a member of Congress or a parent, am concerned with the well-being of our children. We all want to keep our families and our communities safe. We want to see violent predators and criminals put behind bars and punished for the harm they do to others and to society...

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DOJ Must Take Lead on Prison Overcrowding

Posted on March 20, 2013
An article by Mary Price, mainjustice.com, calls into question overcrowding in the Bureau of Prisons. She says "It is time for the Department of Justice to show some sentencing vision." Sentencing and prison overcrowding were front and center inside the Beltway last week...

And Your Little Dog, Too.....

Posted on February 28, 2013
http://www.nationalreview.com/ February 11, 2013 As Washington politicians aim to restrict the Second Amendment, they should look in the mirror. The time to control government?s guns is now. Overarmed federal officials increasingly employ military tactics as a first resort in routine law enforcement...

Why Police Lie Under Oath

Posted on February 08, 2013
By: Michelle Alexander, New York Times THOUSANDS of people plead guilty to crimes every year in the United States because they know that the odds of a jury?s believing their word over a police officer?s are slim to none. As a juror, whom are you likely to believe: the alleged criminal in an orange jumpsuit or two well-groomed police officers in uniforms who just swore to God they?re telling

Federal Judge Defies Sentencing Scheme That Treats Low-Level Drug Offenders Like Kingpins

Posted on February 08, 2013
From January 31, 2013 ThinkProgress Justice Blog A tough-on-crime prosecutor turned federal judge who last year blasted prosecutors' abuse of draconian mandatory minimum sentences has now issued a damming judicial indictment of another aspect of the harsh U...

US Jails More People Than Any Other Country

Posted on October 25, 2012
Borrowed from www.bloomberg.com, October 15, 2012 The U.S. has the world's highest incarceration rate, with Department of Justice data showing more than 2.2 million people behind bars, equal to a city the size of Houston. Click this link to view a chart that compares US incarceration rate to other countries around the world and read the whole article: http://www...

The Throwaways

Posted on September 18, 2012
Police enlist young offenders as confidential informants. But the work is high-risk, largely unregulated, and sometimes fatal. By Sarah Stillman, The New Yorker On the evening of May 7, 2008, a twenty-three-year-old woman named Rachel Hoffman got into her silver Volvo sedan, put on calming jam-band music, and headed north to a public park in Tallahassee, Florida...

BIG BROTHER IS IN YOUR CAR!

Posted on September 18, 2012
f you're on the road, the government likely knows where. Surveillance of drivers is increasing, and appears legal By Jon Campbell (Credit: absolut via Shutterstock/Salon/Benjamin Wheelock) If you?re traveling on public roadways in 2012, there?s a very good chance you?re being watched, by one government agency or another...

Why Do We Sign Plea Agreements?

Posted on September 18, 2012
Why do we sign plea agreements? By Carl Gunn, KM&B, LLP Plea agreements may not provide enough benefits to offset the costs. Think about pleading open -- when you're client's ready -- and saving the right to appeal the sentence. Appellate issues you didn't anticipate may arise during the sentencing process...

Federal Judge Removed from Criminal Case

Posted on August 24, 2012
The Daily Journal (California) August 22, 2012 A divided 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel on Tuesday faulted U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips for her failure to call a competency hearing for a defendant with dementia and ruled that the case be reassigned to a new trial judge...

Alex White, Professional Snitch

Posted on August 15, 2012
From the June 29, 2012 New York Times Magazine Article..... Kathryn Johnston was doing pretty well until the night the police showed up. Ever since her sister died, Johnston, 92, had lived alone in a rough part of Atlanta called the Bluff. A niece checked in often...

As Reports Of Wiretaps Drop, The Government's Real Surveillance Goes Unaccounted

Posted on July 12, 2012
From a July 2, 2012 article in Forbes: Score one for drug dealers and privacy advocates: American law enforcement engaged in 14% fewer phone wiretaps in 2011 than in the year before, according to an annual report released Friday by the U.S. court system...

Injustice in a Sentencing Law

Posted on March 23, 2012
3/20/2012 New York TimesThe Armed Career Criminal Act has long been a source of confusion for federal judges who are required to apply it in criminal cases. The act ratchets up sentences to a mandatory minimum of 15 years for felons who illegally possess guns and have three prior violent felony convictions...

Justice Alito: Crusader for Privacy?

Posted on January 30, 2012
From January 30, 2012 edition of The National Law JournalMeet Justice Samuel Alito Jr.: Cyberpunk in robes? Alito's concurring opinion in the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision involving the Fourth Amendment and GPS surveillance triggered as many conflicting reviews among scholars, court watchers and others as the justices' decision itself...

Sentencing Shift Gives New Clout to Prosecutors

Posted on October 19, 2011
An Article in the September 26, 2011 The New York TimesAfter decades of new laws to toughen sentencing for criminals, prosecutors have gained greater leverage to extract guilty pleas from defendants and reduce the number of cases that go to trial, often by using the treat of more serious charges with mandatory sentences or other harsher penalties...

Justice Denied at Guantanamo

Posted on September 22, 2011
From the National Law Journal, September 19, 2011 by Allison M. Lefrak "The longer cases are delayed, the more credibility the U.S. judicial system loses."http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202514592032&Justice_denied_at_Guantaacutenamo&slreturn=1

Is Facebook a new U.S. Law Enforcement Tool?

Posted on August 08, 2011
Jeff John Roberts - New York (Reuters) U.S. law-enforcement agencies are increasingly obtaining warrants to search Facebook, often gaining detailed access to users' accounts without their knowledge. A Reuters review of the Westlaw legal database shows that since 2008, federal judges have authorized at least two dozen warrants to search individuals' Facebook accounts...

The 2011 Retroactive Crack Cocaine Guideline Amendment FAQ

Posted on August 08, 2011
Some of the most frequently asked questions related to the Retroactive Crack Cocaine Guideline Amendement can be viewed at the USSC website: http://www.ussc.gov/Meetings_and_Rulemaking/Materials_on_Federal_Cocaine_Offenses/FAQ/index.cfm

Private Prisons Spend Millions on Lobbying to Put More People In Jail

Posted on July 01, 2011
Food for thought....Yesterday, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) released a report chronicling the political strategies of private prison companies ?working to make money through harsh policies and longer sentences.? The report?s authors note that while the total number of people in prison increased less than 16 percent, the number of people held in private federal and state facilities increased

Computer Forensics "Innocence Project"

Posted on April 29, 2011
Joe Windish, Technology Editor in LAW, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY posted recently on The Moderate VoiceHave you ever wondered how it is that if your hard drive or mine fails, there?s no hope of ever recovering a thing from it. But if the police get the same hard drive they explain that there?s no way to completely delete anything on it?Computer data is volatile and a good computer forensics expert must

Public Defenders Stretched Thin by State Cuts

Posted on April 25, 2011
From the April 14, 2011 edition of The Wall Street Journal, Nathan Koppel reportsStates and counties struggling to balance their budgets are cutting spending on public defenders, a move some lawyers say is compromising defendants' constitutional right to counsel...

Judges See Sentencing Injustice, but the Calendar Disagrees

Posted on April 22, 2011
From the New York Times April 19, 2011 EditionThe federal judiciary is in something like open rebellion over a new law addressing the sentences to be meted out to people convicted of selling crack cocaine.A couple of weeks ago, for instance, a judge in Massachusetts said he found it ?unendurable? to have to impose sentences that are ?both unjust and racist...

Facebook and Twitter no more?

Posted on December 28, 2010
The Facebook page and Twitter accounts for the Kansas Federal Defender have been removed.

Collateral Costs: Incarceration's Effect on Economic Mobility

Posted on September 30, 2010
The Pew Charitalbe Trusts released a new report today that quantifies the impact of incarceration on the economic mobility of former inmates and their families. Collateral Costs: Incarceration?s Effect on Economic Mobility is a collaborative effort between the Pew Charitable Trusts' Economic Mobility Project and its Public Safety Performance Project (PSPP)...

Fair Sentencing Act of 2010

Posted on July 28, 2010
The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 would raise the minimum quantity of crack cocaine that triggers a 5-year mandatory minimum from 5 grams to 28 grams, and from 50 grams to 280 grams to trigger a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence. The amount of powder cocaine required to trigger the 5 and 10-year mandatory minimums remains the same, at 500 grams and 5 kilograms respectively...

White House Nominates Federal Public Defender from Southern District of Florida

Posted on July 22, 2010
As reported Wednesday, July 21, 2010 in a White House press release, President Obama nominates Kathleen M. Williams to United States District Court judgeship.Nominee for the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida Kathleen M...

Sentence is Sharply Increased for Lawyer Convicted of Aiding Terror

Posted on July 16, 2010
New York Times reports that on Thursday, a federal judge, John G. Koeltl of the Southern District of New York, increased the sentence of Lynne F. Stewart, a disbarred lawyer convicted of assisting terrorism, to 10 years ? nearly five times as long as her original sentence...

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