In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court in Katz v. United States announced a series of exceptions to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. One of those exceptions is the “plain view” evidence exception; i.e., the police may seize items of contraband…
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION
Criminal Jurisdiction:
A Criminal Law Blog from a Defense Perspective
2016
Category: Cyber Crimes | Federal Criminal Law
Computer crimes arrived on the legal landscape in the early 1980s. Law enforcement had relatively few criminal statutes under which to pursue investigations involving computers and wrongdoing. The only statutes then available were the federal wire and mail fraud statutes…
2016
Category: Federal Criminal Law
All judges, especially those at the federal level, must be careful about what they say either in public or during official judicial forums. U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge John Primono forgot this rule of professional conduct on November 18, 2016…
2016
Category: Federal Criminal Law | federal Sentencing
Attorneys who regularly represent clients in federal court understand one disturbing trend—U.S. attorneys are doggedly trying to force criminal trials to a point of extinction. It can be said that many criminal defendants are, in fact, guilty and their admissions…
2016
Category: Appeals | Drug Trafficking | federal Sentencing
A federal plea agreement is a binding contract between the U.S. Government and a criminal defendant. It is sometimes proffered but more often than not is the result of negotiations between Assistant U.S. Attorneys and criminal defense attorneys.
97…
2016
Category: Appeals | Criminal Law
The laws that apply to guilt do not always apply to punishment—at least that is the position of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TexCrimApp). This can create a slippery slope in cases where new evidence tends to undermine both…
2016
Category: Prosecutorial Misconduct
As we have discussed before, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office has a long history of rogue prosecutors who engaged in all sorts of unethical and sometimes illegal conduct to advance their professional careers.
Take, for example, former, and…
2016
Category: Constitutional Law
American history is pockmarked with countless episodes of racial and religious discrimination.
City Upon the Hill
As Americans, we are fond of perpetuating our own storybook myth, beginning with the pilgrims in 1620 and followed by the Puritans,…
2016
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Criminal Law
Crime reached unprecedented levels in the 1980s and early 1990s before it began a precipitous decline beginning in 1995. Experts from every field in the nation’s criminal justice system have offered reasons or speculation about what caused the decline. The…
2016
Category: Illegal Pornography | Internet Sex Crimes
Aaron Wikkerink had an extensive criminal history that included a conviction for a sex offense (aggravated incest that had resulted in an eight-year prison sentence) when he was arrested again in February 2014 in Shreveport, Louisiana on 41 counts of…