Plea deals are a fixture in the U.S. criminal justice system. In fact, many people with no direct connection to the criminal justice system know what plea bargaining is, thanks to popular television crime dramas. The reality of plea deals,…
Category: Criminal Law
2020
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Criminal Law
Judges are human beings like the rest of us. They make smart decisions, and they make decisions that bear little resemblance to logic.
The Louisiana Supreme Court has a tendency—a long history, actually—of making decisions that fall into the latter…
2020
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Criminal Law | Police Misconduct | Prosecutorial Misconduct
Top officials of the Trump administration, including U.S. Attorney General William Barr, claim there is no “systemic racism” in law enforcement in this country. Yet the conservative Republican group, the Lincoln Project, recently called Trump the “second president” of the…
2020
Category: Criminal Law
Detectives and other law enforcement personnel have a broad range of evidence gathering methods used when investigating a crime.
The problem is that not all of these methods are reliable. You’ve probably heard of evidence being thrown out that…
2020
Category: Coronavirus / COVID-19 | Criminal Law
Law enforcement agencies and state officials around the country are doing their best to maintain order during this unprecedented time. In the state of Texas, this included the declaration of a disaster.
One man in the state of Texas…
2020
Category: Corruption | Criminal Law | Homicide/Murder
In a recent podcast interview with Mehdi Hasan, MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirscher posed the interesting possibility that President Donald J. Trump could face criminal liability after leaving office. According to Kirshner, the President faces criminal exposure because of his…
2020
As of October 2019, genetic genealogy had been used to solve roughly 50 rapes and homicides across 29 states, including the infamous Golden State Killer. Family Tree DNA defines genetic genealogy as “the use of DNA testing to determine relationships…
2020
Category: Criminal Law | DWI
As we have noted before, criminal trials and sentencing are governed by strict rules of evidence and procedures. Objections to admission of impermissible evidence during the trial and to procedures utilized in the sentencing process that results in an illegal…
2019
Category: Criminal Justice Reform | Criminal Law
The release of thousands of unjustly jailed citizens, an end to solitary confinement, a ban on private prisons, and raising the bar on prosecutorial accountability are all important criminal justice reforms gaining traction on the 2020 campaign trail.
However,…
2019
Category: Constitutional Law | Criminal Law
Every criminal defense attorney has had a client whose crime repulsed the attorney.
Every criminal suspect is entitled under both our state and federal constitutions to have the assistance of counsel and to have an attorney appointed to them…