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A Family Feud During the Holidays Could Lead to Domestic Assault and Battery Claims

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Domestic Assault and Battery Nearly everybody spends time with family members during the holiday season, and in some families, too much time together can result in relatives getting into arguments and fighting. If things get out of control, a fight might escalate from mere words to a physical altercation. When family members get into physical altercations, it can result in domestic assault and battery charges. Domestic Violence Involves Family or Household Members Some people are surprised to find that when they get into a fistfight with their cousin, the cops are called and they can be arrested and charged with domestic violence. Most people think of domestic violence in the context of romantic relationships, but domestic violence can occur whenever an act of violence involves two family members or people who share a living space. Family can include blood relatives and those related by marriage. Household members can be any people who are living together in the same…

Milo Y. Loses Book Deal, Gets Canned from Conservative Conference

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I don't know who Milo Y. is, but apparently he is with Breitbart News (which I never read.) Some old video of his that has popped up and is recirculating is apparently bad enough that Simon and Schuster has canceled his book deal and CPAC has... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Father Gets 2 Years for Cruise Ship Attack on Teen Who Propositioned Daughter

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The 33-year-old Ohio father of a teenage girl was sentenced to two years in prison for an attack on a teen boy who had allegedly propositioned the 13-year-old girl while on a cruise ship off the coast of Florida. The incident occurred on an Independence of the Seas cruise ship back in the summer of 2015, where defendant and his family were vacationing. Defendant’s brother-in-law reportedly overheard the teen boy, age 14, offer his daughter a key chain in exchange for giving him her virginity. Authorities then said defendant took no action to intervene when the 31-year-old brother-in-law grabbed the boy in the library of the ship, forced him to pull down his pants and simulated a sexual act on him. He was arrested and later convicted on charges of child abuse and false imprisonment. Despite his repeated apologies to the court and insistence that he meant no harm, the judge pointed out the man had failed to apologize to the teen boy himself.  Still, while the nature of…

How to Disenfranchise

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If you've read about Daniel Ramirez-Medina, the DACA recipient still detained by ICE, you've seen how ICE has called him a known gang member, or KGM. (Even more troubling are allegations by his lawyers that ICE tampered with his statement to try to "prove" that he was a KGM. This wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened: an ICE attorney pled guilty in 2016 to forging a document meant to deny a Mexican immigrant the chance to apply for a green card.)​This is a way the government denies due process for Latinos: by calling them gang members and not giving them any way to challenge the designation. I had a client who reported gang activity - a knife attack - and testified against them, and then got picked up and denied bond because they called him a known gang member.Muslims get called supporters of terrorism under a similar scheme. The whole Muslim Brotherhood issue? Same thought process: find a way to label a community as suspect…

Justice Sotomayor (joined by Justice Breyer) authors lengthy dissent to denial of cert in Alabama lethal injection protocol challenge

Failure To Appear In Court Penalties In Minnesota

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Ignoring a problem doesn’t mean it will go away. In fact, most times it makes the situation worse. If you are arrested and charged with a crime, don’t just ignore your summons and hope the court forgets about you, because they won’t. Ignoring your mandatory appearance can actually lead to a “Failure to Appear” charge, which is another headache you’ll have to deal with. Today, we take a closer look at failure to appear laws in Minnesota, and the penalties for committing the crime. Failure To Appear If your presence is required by the court and you decide not to show up, you can be charged with failure to appear. The court is not going to care what your excuse was, so you’re not going to get the charges dropped by telling the judge that you couldn’t find a babysitter or you had to work that day. Court dates are set weeks in advance, and you have the ability to ask for a new date, so there’s no excuse for missing a mandatory…

US Sentencing Commission releases big new report on "Recidivism Among Federal Drug Trafficking Offenders"

Momentum for additional prison closures growing

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At a Texas House Appropriations subcommittee meeting this week, legislators and staff openly discussed the possibility of additional prison closures in response to the budget crunch. Reported Mike Ward at the Houston Chronicle/Express-News:State lawmakers may consider shuttering another prison and paroling some older, infirm inmates to nursing homes in a bid to shift more than $400 million in funding toward rising health care costs and much-needed repairs and upgrades to Texas’ aging corrections facilities. The state already is poised to spend more than $6.7 billion over the next two years for prisons and corrections programs. But with the legislature looking at the tightest state budget in years, lawmakers quietly are looking for ways to save $421 million in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice operations to cover surging costs associated with overseeing the state’s 147,000 convicts. Topping the list is $247 million to pay the costs of convicts’…

"Not My President's Day" Protests

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This is the first year since 2003 TalkLeft did not have a President's Day Post. Why? I don't have a President. Donald Trump doesn't deserve the title. I have yet to call him "President" and I never will. He's the man who somehow got... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

What Is “Probable Cause”?

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You cannot be arrested for a crime in Collin County unless police and prosecutors have probable cause to charge you. But what exactly does “probable cause” mean? You have probably heard that phrase many times before without understanding its origin…Read more ›

Pleading Guilty: The Single Biggest Decision

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Handling criminal cases, mostly in the federal courts in Atlanta, throughout Georgia, and in many other states, is how we spend most of our time, as anyone who reads this blog knows. The single biggest decision in most of our cases is whether the client should, or should not, plead guilty.  Even when we are convinced that our client “did not do it”, some clients don’t have the resources or intestinal fortitude to fight the case all the way to the finish line. I recently concluded such a case, where I thought that the prosecution’s case was weak from the beginning and was getting weaker as we approached trial.  The client, however, did not want to take the chance on losing, and since he is the one who has to serve the time in prison, he decided that the better approach was to negotiate a deal for a much shorter sentence.   I was thinking about that when I noticed this morning that the U.S. Supreme Court granted review in a case that…

CAPTION CONTEST

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A riddle: How do you know it's Monday in the good ol REGJB? Answer: They are fixing the escalators!Except it's Tuesday- but Monday court's are closed. Caption contest: Add caption to picture:We'll start:"Fred, I still can't understand Robert's reasoning upholding ObamaCare." Site Feed

Rule 404 and Evidence of Prior Incarceration

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In a recent decision, the Court of Appeals granted a new trial on the ground that improper and prejudicial character evidence regarding a prior incarceration of the defendant was admitted at trial. The case presents a reminder about the distinction between North Carolina Rules of Evidence 404(a) and 404(b) and sheds light on the admissibility of evidence of a defendant’s incarceration. Facts. In State v. Rios, ___ N.C. App. ___ (Dec. 20, 2016), law enforcement obtained a warrant to search the residence of the defendant, where he lived with the homeowner and another roommate. The search revealed nearly sixty pounds of marijuana and a host of other evidence of drug distribution activity. The police found about seven pounds of marijuana in the defendant’s bedroom, most of which was in a large box. Fifty more pounds were found in the garage. A latent fingerprint found on drug-packaging material in the homeowner’s room was matched to the defendant. The…

Tuesday Open Thread

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I'm in court all day (and then again on Thursday and Friday on another case.) I hope Trump doesn't blow up the world this week. Since I'm not reading much news these days except about the supposed cartel infighting in and killings all... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

New bills would strip rapists of parental rights

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2-21-17 Massachusetts: BOSTON – If a convicted rapist conceives a child through his crime, should he have parental rights for that child? Local legislators think absolutely not, and have put their opinions into action with two new bills. Brockton state Rep. Michelle Dubois and Everett state Sen. Sal DiDomenico both filed bills in January to amend current state law, which says a person convicted

After a light sentence draws outrage, Sen. Irene Aguilar wants to change how sex offenders are sentenced in Colorado

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2-21-17 Colorado: When a Boulder judge determined Austin Wilkerson wouldn’t spend a day in prison for raping an acquaintance, the decision drew national outrage. The judge cited Colorado’s indeterminate sentencing laws in rendering his decision. He feared Wilkerson would spend the rest of his life in prison if he walked through those doors. A bill in the Colorado Senate would let judges opt for

A few notable criminal justice panels at CPAC

Virginia criminal defense- The power of asserting speedy trial rights

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Virginia is not the most hospitable of places for criminal defendants, with its crabbed criminal discovery rules that lead to trial by fire, its harsh presumptions of no pretrial bail for too many felonies, and its absence of an automatic appeal from a felony trial conviction. Yet, we must always pan for gold in any battlefield. In Virginia, a felony trial generally must commence within five months after probable cause is found at a preliminary hearing (or indictment if no preliminary hearing is held) for defendants detained pretrial, and nine months for those not detained. Va. Code § 19.2-243. That is a magnificent counterpoint to federal appellate speedy trial jurisprudence which generally does not even start the speedy trial analysis until six months has passed, and then compels a four-part balancing test. U.S. Const. Amend. VI; Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514 (1972). Courts often find waiver by silence, so the defense must be ready when objecting to…

John Wiley Price Trial: a Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyer’s 10 Things to Know

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Back in July 2014, Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price was arrested by federal authorities on corruption charges.  It was a real shock.  The entire city reeled from the news of District 3’s “Our Man Downtown” being indicted. For details, read our July 2014 post “The John Wiley Price Case: a Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyer’s Predictions.” Also, check out the actual 100+ page indictment from the federal grand jury we provided. This week, two and a half years later, the criminal trial begins.   My July 2014 Predictions for the John Wiley Price Case Were Correct First of all, let’s consider those predictions.  How did my July 2014 Predictions fare? 1.  No Plea Deal Well, as I predicted, John Wiley Price did not take a plea deal.  I predicted he would not plead guilty to any charge.  I could not see Commissioner Price negotiating a plea deal. I was right.  John Wiley Price has entered a…

The Impact of Business Courts (Outside of Delaware)

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Jens Dammann, Business Courts and Firm Performance (U. Tex. Research Paper No. 564, 2017), available at SSRN. Omari Simmons Professor Jens Dammann’s paper titled Business Courts and Firm Performance is a bold attempt to answer a vexing question concerning the efficacy of state business courts. The paper can be summed up with a simple phrase and minor qualification: business courts are important (outside of Delaware). Specifically, the paper addresses the question of “whether giving publicly traded corporations access to business courts to litigate their internal corporate affairs benefits firm performance.” (P. 1. ) The paper answers this question affirmatively. More importantly, the paper provides a long-awaited empirical justification to claims that business courts, outside of Delaware, are a positive development for publicly traded firms in the sense that these courts impact a corporation’s bottom line. The underlying hypothesis of Dammann’s…
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