The impending February 28, 2019 execution date for 70-year-old Texas condemned inmate Billie Coble underscores the issue of the nation’s aging death row population. According to the Texas Tribune, there were 224 inmates housed on Texas’s death row as of…
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION
Criminal Jurisdiction:
A Criminal Law Blog from a Defense Perspective
2019
As President Donald J. Trump takes his demand for a “border wall” to extreme limits, ranchers and private property owners in the path of that proposed wall worry about the government’s dictatorial right to seize their land and property through…
2019
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Death Penalty
In 2008, Blaine Milam and Jessica Carson were 18-year-old teenagers living together in Milam’s trailer in Rusk County, Texas. Jessica had a 13-month-old child named Amora Carson. The couple met earlier that year while Jessica was still in high school.…
2019
Category: Capital Crimes | Treason
What do you think of when you hear the words “capital crime”?
Most people in the Lone Star State probably think murder. After all, capital charges are reserved for only the most serious of offenses.
However, there are…
2019
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Criminal Law
The recent, and longest, government shutdown has focused public attention on claims by President Donald Trump and his Wall proponents that crime is not only a major problem but is actually out of control along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Both…
2019
There was a time in this country in the not too distant past when there was a difference between illegal immigration and asylum. President Trump is not fond of either. He and his administration have done everything possible, both legal…
2019
Category: Appeals | DWI | Homicide/Murder
In the early morning hours on Christmas Eve, 2014, there was a horrific car accident in El Paso, Texas. According to news reports, local police believed that Joel Garcia was both intoxicated and speeding when he ran a red light…
2019
Category: Criminal Law | Drug Crime
The First Step Act (“Act”) is expected to produce badly needed reform of the federal mandatory minimum sentencing scheme. The reform legislation offers promise to improve rehabilitation programs and living conditions in the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
More importantly,…
2019
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Prosecutorial Misconduct
Bite mark evidence has long been a discredit forensic science. The FBI has renounced it and the American Dental Association does not recognize it.
And for good reason.
In June 2013, USAToday reported that 20 men convicted or…
2019
Category: Sex Crimes | Sex Trafficking
The last decade of media attention given to increasing human sex trafficking inside U.S; borders has sparked intense public interest, triggering an unprecedented law enforcement and prosecutorial response to address these kinds of crimes. This type of response at the…