Many Texans have now seen Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott’s ad about his herculean effort to re-build his strength following an accident in 1984 that left him permanently wheelchair bound. The ad depicts Abbott in a sweaty t-shirt…
Category: Federal Criminal Law
2014
Category: Federal Criminal Law
Socrates once said, “Four things belong to a judge: to hear courteously, to listen wisely, to consider soberly, and to decide impartially.”
The federal appellate courts have long recognized that a judge is more than “mere moderator” in federal…
2014
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Sex Crimes
Probably the most difficult constitutional claim to establish in a federal habeas corpus proceeding is one of “actual innocence.” This premise was reinforced by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on August 19, 2014 in Jones v. Taylor.
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2014
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Sex Crimes
File sharing permits the public or private sharing of computer data in a network that allows multiple people to read, view, modify, copy, print, or write in the same file. Child pornographers frequently utilize file sharing to share and receive…
2014
Category: Federal Criminal Law
Gov. Rick Perry and his defense team have characterized his recent two felony abuse of power indictments by a Travis County Grand Jury as “banana Republic politics.” The governor, and his defense team, is giving “banana Republic politics” a bum…
2014
Category: Federal Criminal Law
Cameron Todd Willingham was executed by the State of Texas on February 17, 2004. He was the seventh person put to death that year in the state, and the 320th person executed since 1982 when Texas resumed executions in the…
2014
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Terrorism Criminology
The recent confrontations between the Ferguson, Missouri Police Department and the city’s African-American community have served at least one purpose: it has shown the entire nation that too many police departments have become militarized units committed to absolute control, rather…
2014
Category: Drug Crime | Federal Criminal Law
Kentucky is often a state of distinction for the wrong reasons. It ranks in the top ten of the two of the worst categories: corruption and meth labs. Both categories lend support to each other. The Kentucky States Police reported…
2014
On July 21, 2014, Arizona convicted murderer John Rudolph Woods became the fourth condemned inmate this year to die in a “botched” lethal injection execution in this country. He spent 90 minutes gasping for air every 10 seconds or so,…
2014
Category: Federal Criminal Law
Courts generally consider the evidentiary power of confessions to be uniquely persuasive of guilt. In 1991, the U.S. Supreme Court Arizona v. Fulminante found that a confession is unlike any other evidence, saying “the defendant’s own confession is probably the…