The first thing to know about the raging battle between the U.S. Justice Department and Apple over the iPhone used by San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook is that it has nothing to do with individual privacy.
First, the phone…
2016
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The first thing to know about the raging battle between the U.S. Justice Department and Apple over the iPhone used by San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook is that it has nothing to do with individual privacy.
First, the phone…
Category: Federal Criminal Law
THE FEDERAL PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
In 1984, Congress enacted, in a bipartisan manner, the Sentencing Reform Act (SRA) following a decade of hearings, arguments and procedural wrangling. The SRA was supported by every U.S. Senator except one—Senator Charles…
Category: Drug Trafficking | Federal Criminal Law
The federal judicial system has a perverse way of treating similarly situated criminal defendants in shameful disparate ways. For example, a federal drug defendant who fights their case at trial will receive a sentence three times more severe than a…
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Illegal Pornography
Federal courts are loathed to reverse a criminal conviction for technical statutory violations. This was evidenced in the January 21, 2016 decision by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in United States v. Welch.
John Welch was convicted of…
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Illegal Pornography | Internet Sex Crimes
Several years ago we posted a piece about the FBI seizing and continuing to run a child pornography website between November 16, 2012 and December 2, 2012. The site, which had 5000 customers, was seized as part of a large…
Category: Corporate Fraud | Criminal Law | Federal Criminal Law
Americans over the past five or six decades have been lulled into believing white collar crime—crimes committed by the affluent or large companies (fraud, embezzlement, defective products, etc.)—is more socially acceptable than “blue collar” crime—crimes more often tied to street…
Category: Bank Fraud | Federal Criminal Law | Prosecutorial Misconduct
Most people have not heard of the former Toronto broker George Georgiou who was convicted in February 2010 on one count of conspiracy, four counts of securities fraud and four counts of wire fraud in federal court and sentenced to…
Category: Appeals | Federal Criminal Law | Guns
There’s no question that Des Moines, Iowa resident David Anthony Tumea had serious mental health problems in 2012.
There is also no question that Tumea had a bizarre proclivity for collecting, making, and possessing anything that could be used…
Category: Appeals | Criminal Law | Federal Criminal Law
Ivan Garcia-Lopez probably wishes he had taken his meal somewhere else on the evening February 5, 2014. He was living in a single-wide trailer home in Wharton County, Texas, with Jaime Garcia and his brother, Yonari.
Felony Arrest Warrant…
Category: Criminal Law | Drug Trafficking | Federal Criminal Law
Bowling Green State University criminologist Philip M. Stinson is recognized as probably the nation’s best authority on police misconduct. Over a ten-year period, beginning in 2005, Stinson compiled a database of 11,000 cases of misconduct involving nearly 9,000 officers.
…