The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TexCrimApp) this past October upset district attorneys and “tough on crime” legislators throughout the state when it declared a key provision of the state’s “Online Solicitation of a Minor” statute unconstitutional. Texas Penal Code…
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION
Criminal Jurisdiction:
A Criminal Law Blog from a Defense Perspective
2014
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Sex Crimes
On January 6, 2014, the First Circuit Court of Appeals in United States v. Breton narrowed the scope of the marital communications privilege.
The Federal case against Royce Breton, a Sanford , Maine resident, began in April 2010. Several…
2014
Category: Federal Criminal Law
On December 29, 2013, the final episode of the critically acclaimed drama series, Treme, aired on HBO. Created by David Simon and Eric Overmeyer, the series premiered on April 11, 2010 and focused on life after Hurricane Katrina in a…
2014
Border patrol agents, either through experience or training, develop expert, almost magical, observation skills about vehicle behavior that can create a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.
Andres Lopez-Cruz exhibited such behavior as he drove down Highway 80 near the…
2014
Category: Federal Criminal Law
With the Edward Snowden leaks, revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) covertly monitors the email and cell phone use of virtually every person in the world, and conflicting Federal court decisions about whether the NSA’s surveillance programs are constitutional,…
2014
Category: Federal Criminal Law
Most of the time mandatory minimums are discussed in the context of federal cases, the discussion involves drugs. Over the past few years, Congress has passed various pieces of legislation that have reduced some of the more excessive punishments meted…
2014
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Immigration Crimes
Walter Yovany Vasquez Macias (“Vasquez”) is a citizen of Honduras. He has a long and convoluted immigration history in the United States. Sometimes during or before 1990 he was detained in California for being in the country illegally. He voluntarily…
2014
Category: Federal Criminal Law
Ted Nugent’s recent racially inflammatory “subhuman mongrel” comment directed at the President of the United States has triggered a national debate about whether individuals suffering from mental illness or who abuse drugs/alcohol should enjoy a Second Amendment right to gun…
2014
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Sex Crimes
The maze of Federal post-conviction habeas corpus can be a procedural nightmare as illustrated in a February 13, 2014 decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Vosgien v. United States.
In 2006, Kelly Vosgien entered a guilty…
2014
In a recent post, we discussed the general parameters of the prosecution’s duty to preserve materially exculpatory evidence under a pair of U.S. Supreme Court decisions: Trombetta v. California (1984) and Arizona v. Youngblood (1988).
Trombetta established the rule…