As criminal defense lawyers we know a thing or two about “prosecutors of the year.” In October 2011, we posted a couple of blistering pieces about former Williamson County, Texas, “Prosecutor of the Year” Ken Anderson, now a criminal district…
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION
Criminal Jurisdiction:
A Criminal Law Blog from a Defense Perspective
2013
Category: Drug Crime | Federal Criminal Law
Last year the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Jones held that attaching a magnetic GPA tracking device to the exterior of a vehicle constituted a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Saying that attaching such a…
2013
Category: Drug Crime | Federal Criminal Law
The FBI, DEA, and ATF, whose primary law enforcement responsibilities are to investigate drug, guns, and violence, use informants to carry out these responsibilities. These informants, known as “CIs,” are typically $100 a day, plus expenses, and with a “wink-wink”…
2013
Category: Federal Criminal Law
Most judges favor prosecutors. No secret about that. A visit to any courthouse in America during a criminal trial will reveal this fact.
The notion that judges are to be fair and impartial arbiters in a criminal case morphs…
2013
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Sex Crimes
Richard Roosevelt Bahr, Jr. is an admitted sex offender. In 2003, he was convicted in Wasco County, Oregon of third-degree rape—a Class C felony with a person under 16 years of age. He was given a six-year term followed by…
2013
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Sex Crimes
The State of Texas has made it easier to convict individuals charged with sex crimes against children by allowing evidence of completely unrelated bad acts to be admissible at trial. While the rest of the Country seems concerned about preventing…
2013
SUPREME COURT TAKES A LOOK AT “STRAW PURCHASES” UNDER ATF FORM 4473.
On October 15, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide exactly what constitutes an illegal “straw purchase” of a firearm under federal law. The case bringing…
2013
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Sex Crimes
The Violence Against Women Act of 1994(“VAWA”) is a remedial statute that contains specific categories of compensable losses. The VAWA was codified in 18 U.S.C. § 2259. The statute has been used in recent years by adults, who were victimized…
2013
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Sex Crimes
When she was eight and nine years old, Amy was repeatedly sexually abused by her uncle. The uncle photographed the abuse and uploaded the images on the Internet. In the late 1990s, law enforcement officials traced the images back to…
2013
Category: Federal Criminal Law
Divorce estimates vary in the U.S. It is safe to say that between 950,000 to 1.2 million occur in this country each year—an average of about 2500 a day. This means there are a lot of unhappy and angry people…