Harris County’s Precinct 4 is the largest Constable’s office in the United States with nearly 500 sworn deputies funded by a $52 million annual budget. Mark Herman, a three decade veteran with the Precinct 4 office, was appointed constable by…
Category: Criminal Law
2017
Category: Criminal Law | Federal Criminal Law
The nation’s “prison industrial complex”—which drew its name from the “military industrial complex” coined by President Eisenhower in 1959—began in earnest with President’s Reagan “Crime Control Act of 1984” and was provided with steroids through President Clinton’s “Violent Crime Control…
2017
Category: Constitutional Law | Criminal Law
Digital Receiver Technology, Inc. manufactures a security surveillance device called DRT 1301C. The devices are known in law enforcement and military circles as “dirt boxes.” It is referred to by that name because the police and military use it to…
2017
Category: Appeals | Criminal Law
There appears to be an increasing judicial feud underway between the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) and the lower appellate courts throughout the state. The lower appeal courts are finding constitutional errors in criminal trials, attaching harm to them,…
2017
The Louisiana legal system, much like its political system, has never enjoyed a reputation for deep thinking or the ability to grasp complex constitutional issues.
For example, in 2004 the state sentenced Patrick O’Neal Kennedy to death for the…
2017
Category: Constitutional Law | Criminal Law
With a population of less than 21,000 people, Worth County, Georgia is hardly a speck on the nation’s map. But, thanks to Worth County Sheriff Jeff Hobby, the county finds itself at the center of a major legal controversy after…
2017
Category: Criminal Law | Sex Crimes
Drunken cowboys and cowgirls on a trail ride is a recipe for trouble—and that is precisely what a jury found happen in December 2012 when a Texas trail ride visited Dayton in Liberty County.
Allegedly, a drunken 54-year-old cowboy…
2017
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Criminal Law
Some of the facts in the fatal shooting of Anthony Lamar Smith in December 2011 by former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley are not in dispute.
On December 20, 2011, Stockley and his partner Brian Bianchi witnessed a…
2017
Category: Criminal Law | Federal Criminal Law
Moments before he took his own life in a Massachusetts prison this past April, former NFL star Aaron Hernandez was a convicted murderer. The moment life passed from his body in that maximum security cell, he became an innocent man.…
2017
Category: Appeals | Criminal Law | Murder
Texas has more than its share of bad drivers. One of its cities, San Antonio, ranks in the top ten among the nation’s most dangerous drivers.
In 2016, there were 3,773 traffic fatalities in Texas, according to the Texas…