Let us start by stating that most police officers are decent, hardworking people who make good faith efforts to fulfill their sworn duty to protect and serve. On a daily basis, they face dangerous, and often fatal, risks as they…
Category: Criminal Law
2016
Category: Criminal Law | Sexual Abuse
In 2012, a judge in Sacramento placed a 17-year-old rape victim in juvenile detention because she failed to appear in court on two occasions to testify against the suspected 37-year-old serial rapist who abducted and raped her.
Incarcerating Victims…
2016
America’s penal incarceration statistics are shocking to say the least.
The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that there were 2.2 million people in the nation’s jails and prisons at the end of 2014.
BJS figures showed that another…
2016
There has always been something fundamentally flawed about the relationship between the police and black people in this country. This troubled relationship actually pre-dates the establishment of organized policing. It stems from the Southern Slave Patrols (first established in South…
2016
The National Institute of Justice has found that a police officer’s “demeanor and actions are crucial to perceptions of police legitimacy. If officers communicate well, listen and treat citizens with respect, citizens will respond in kind.” In fact, research shows…
2016
Category: Criminal Law | Prosecutorial Misconduct
The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) monitors lawless local police departments and state prisons across the country – and there are plenty of them in need of oversight.
In a June 6, 2016 opinion piece, To Stop Bad Prosecutors Call…
2016
Category: Criminal Law
While there are no statistics readily available, police K-9 apprehensions number in the tens of thousands each year. Excessive police force claims tend to focus on firearms or Tasers but the unlawful use of police dogs to attack suspects has…
2016
Category: Criminal Law | Federal Criminal Law
There are actually 52 court systems in the United States: the 50 state systems, the federal system, and the local court system in the District of Columbia. The supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution requires that federal law trumps any…
2016
The current presidential election campaign has awakened the racial divide in this country. And it’s not a pretty sight. The latest example of this divide is the controversy swirling around the “fist salute” given by 16 graduating African-American female cadets…
2016
Category: Criminal Law | DWI
Currently pending before the Supreme Court are consolidated cases from Minnesota and North Dakota—under the title of Birchfield v. North Dakota—that could significantly change the way states deal with suspected drunk drivers.
The question before the Court is this:…