Texas is a death penalty state; in fact, it has executed more people than any other state since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. Many of the 561 people put to death by the state since the 1982…
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION
Criminal Jurisdiction:
A Criminal Law Blog from a Defense Perspective
2019
That Michael Kwan, a justice court judge in Taylorsville, Utah, has a history of violating the Utah Code of Judicial Conduct is not subject of debate. During his two decade tenure on the bench, he has faced numerous ethics complaints…
2019
Category: Illegal Pornography | Sex Crimes
A Vermont man is currently being held without bail because authorities located a single “improper” image of two young boys and a young girl. The man told authorities that the image came from a (legal) nudist website.
Why so…
2019
Category: Immigration Crimes
Almost a year ago President Donald Trump tweeted the view that undocumented immigrants should be immediately returned “from where they came” – no judges, no court cases.
That narrow view parallels his executive ordered zero-tolerance policy on immigration which…
2019
Category: Death Penalty
Pentobarbital: Texas’s drug of choice in carrying out its lethal injection executions.
Texas was the first state in 1982 to use a lethal three-drug protocol to execute people. The three-drug protocol, which was eventually adopted by most other states,…
2019
Category: Appeals | Drug Crime
The Confrontation Clause prominently embedded in the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that a criminal defendant has a fundamental right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.”
Fifteen years ago the U.S. Supreme Court forcefully…
2019
Category: Appeals | Prosecutorial Misconduct
Firing an employee in retaliation for refusing to perform an unlawful act violates both federal (Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) and Texas (Chapter 21 of the Texas Labor Code) law.
Further, the Texas Supreme Court…
2019
Category: Constitutional Law | Corruption
Congress’s authority to conduct oversight, and its corollary power to investigate, the executive branch of government (and all of its agencies) are not explicitly stated in Article 1, Section 1 of the United States Constitution. But from the very first…
2019
In early April, House and Ways Committee Chairman Richard Neal requested six years of President Donald Trump’s tax returns and tax information. Chairman Neal has the legal authority under the Revenue Act of 1924 to request the president’s tax information.…
2019
Category: Fraud | Mortgage Fruad | White Collar Crime
More than a decade after one of the worst financial crises in the mortgage lending industry that unfolded in 2008, law enforcement authorities continue to apprehend some who still choose to blatantly take unfair advantage of the nation’s homebuyers (and…