On September 1st, a new law took effect in Texas is intended to fundamentally change the landscape of the grand jury selection process. Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation designed to “reform” this selection process by eliminating the “pick-pal” method of…
Category: Criminal Law
2015
Category: Criminal Law | Federal Criminal Law
Psychopathic Records is located in Farmington Hills, Michigan. The recording label is owned by Insane Clown Posse. The label was formed in 1991 by the group’s leader. In a September 2015 decision, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said the…
2015
Category: Criminal Law | Federal Criminal Law
Congress has always had its nose in the business of mental health, alternately responding and ignoring the issue with little success. Over all, politicians have had little real concern about the equitable treatment of individuals suffering from mental health…
2015
Category: Criminal Law | Federal Criminal Law | Prosecutorial Misconduct
Claims of excessive force against the police are difficult to prove. To make matters more difficult, until recently the evidence presented to justify the force used was typically only the testimony of the police officers involved, who routinely vouched for…
2015
Last November USATODAY reported that data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report showed that in 2013 the police fatally shot 461 felony suspects—the highest number in two decades. In the wake of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri last…
2015
Category: Criminal Law | Federal Criminal Law
On May 16, 2013, former Texas Governor Rick Perry signed into law the Michael Morton Act (“Morton Act”). It is one of the most significant pieces of criminal justice legislation Gov. Perry turned into law with his signature.
In…
2015
Category: Criminal Law | Drug Trafficking | Federal Criminal Law
In 2012, the U.S. Census Bureau reported (“Sharing a Household”) that the number of shared family households in this country increased by 11.4 percent between 2007 and 2010. A majority of shared households consist of adult children, and their families,…
2015
Category: Criminal Law
We have posted in the past, and quite recently, about the complexity courts face when trying to apply the Confrontation Clause in criminal cases.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 1974 in Davis v. Alaska held that the Sixth Amendment’s…
2015
As criminal defense lawyers we know all too well that there are prosecutors who daily walk right up to the line of professional misconduct. It is infuriating to witness prosecutors derive pleasure from winning at all cost, forgetting their sworn…
2015
Category: Criminal Law
The Ferguson Police Department is not only an embarrassment to every law enforcement agency in this country but an embarrassment to the entire State of Missouri.
Last year the nation witnessed their unprofessional conduct in scores of incidents as…