Presidential clemency, most often a commutation of a criminal sentence, is a last-ditch effort to have a reduced because of its harshness or an inordinate amount of time served by the offender. Presidential clemency powers are rarely exercised and it…
Author: John Floyd
2022
Category: Death Penalty | Federal Criminal Law
The death penalty is generally a state matter. Until the thirteen executionswere carried out during the Trump presidency, there had not been a federal execution since 2003.
President Joe Biden stated last year that there would be no executions…
2022
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Police Misconduct | Qualified Immunity
THE PERILS OF A TRAFFIC STOP
The Stanford Open Policing Project (SOPR) reports that police conduct 50,000 traffic stops daily. These traffic stops result in more than 20 million American motorists interacting with the police each year.
At best, traffic…
2022
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Federal Fraud | Fraud | Wire Fraud
Before 2010, federal prosecutors routinely used the honest services component of the federal fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1346, to criminalize the failure of public officials and corporate executives to report their financial gains from business dealings with corporate or…
2022
On April 21, 2022, Texas executed Carl Wayne Buntion by lethal injection. He was 78 years old—the oldest prisoner ever executed in Texas.
By the time of his execution, Buntion had been in prison two months shy of 32 years—more…
2022
A little more than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, a picture is emerging as to the effect the pandemic has had on the nation’s prison and jail systems.
The United States incarcerates more people than any other country…
2022
Category: Federal Criminal Law
There are 403 chapters in the United States Code. Each chapter has statutes that prohibit offenses specific to each chapter. Many, if not most, of these federal statutes cover crimes that are often complex. They can be confusing, which is…
2022
Category: Embezzlement | Fraud | Money Laundering | Ponzi Schemes | Robbery | White Collar Crime
White collar crimes are prevalent in the U.S. Money offers both temptation and opportunity. These crimes occur in the context of someone taking advantage of a position of trust to embezzle or to encourage people to engage in some fraudulent…
2022
In October of 2019, the Texas Civil Rights Project(TCRP) issued a report, “Torture by Another Name: Solitary Confinement in Texas,” that showed there were (as of May 2019) 4,165 inmates housed in long term solitary confinement in the Lone Star…
2022
Category: Criminal Law | Death Penalty
On February 17, 2007, paramedics in Harlingen, Texas, responded to a call at an apartment shared by Melissa Lucio and her husband, Robert Alvarez. The EMTs found the couple’s two-year-old daughter, Mariah, unresponsive and, according to police reports, covered with…