Earlier this month, a North Carolina appellate court held that the Fourth Amendment does not apply in driver’s license revocation hearings, “even if those proceedings could be viewed as quasi-criminal in nature.” In 2013, Myra Lynne Combs was stopped by North Carolina police without reasonable suspicion in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The arresting officer received an anonymous call regarding a possible drunk driver weaving in a blue Ford Explorer on Highway U.S. 52. The officer proceeded to U.S. 52 and observed a vehicle matching the caller’s description. The officer and a backup officer followed the suspect, but they did not observe any erratic driving aside from a “slight cross of the center” line of the roadway, which was unpainted. After the driver pulled into a driveway, the officers initiated a traffic stop. The first officer approached Combs’ car. There, he detected a strong odor of…
Appellate Court Holds That Fourth Amendment Does Not Apply to License Revocation Hearings
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Homeland Security Blanket
It is amusing to watch Republicans' inability to govern their own lunatic ward d/b/a the House of Representatives. House Speaker John Boehner's orange hue is starting to pale as he attempts to navigate between the nihilists in his party who welcome shutting down the government in order to make a symbolic point about Obama's immigration policies and those who have at least a tenuous grasp on reality that allows them to understand that the failure to fund the Department of Homeland Security has political perils if not national security ones.California Senator Barbara Boxer's recent rant against Senate Republicans received a lot of attention. She trashed them as a "national disgrace" for threatening a shutdown "of the very agency that protects the health, the safety, the lives, of the American people – the Department of Homeland Security." She noted GOP hypocrisy in arguing…
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Bank of New York Melon Computer Tech Indicted
Checking your credit report is the best way to detect criminal fraudulent activity done in your name. Evidence of identity theft typically comes in the form of fraudulent or inaccurate information on your credit report, such as incorrect addresses, name, initials or Social Security number. Here are some other signs of identity theft: • Failing to receive bills or other mail related to your accounts (an identity thief may have taken over your account and changed the billing address).Receiving credit cards for which you did not apply. • Unexpectedly being denied credit or being offered less-favorable credit terms than expected. • Getting calls from debt collectors or businesses about debts or charges you cannot explain. • Strange charges and debts on your accounts that don't make sense or on accounts you didn't open. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office issued a press release involving the criminal arrest and indictment of defendant, a…
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I Am Going To Kill You
Last week Vanderbilt basketball coach Kevin Starlings made ESPN Sportscenter for a remark that Stallings wish he would never have yelled. Right after Vanderbilt beat Tennessee , a player made some gestures that could be construed as unsportsmanlike . Stallings yelled at the player after the game " I am going to kill you". It happens all the time . One might make that statement not meaning any harm. However , could Coach Stallings been arrested for that threat ? Under Tennessee criminal law , one can be charged with a simple assault under three different theories. Tennessee Code Annotated 39-13-101 sets forth the following elements of simple assault. 39-13-101. Assault. (a) A person commits assault who: (1) Intentionally, knowingly or recklessly causes bodily injury to another; (2) Intentionally or knowingly causes another to reasonably fear imminent bodily injury; or …
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California Supreme Court rules blanket sex-offender residency restriction fails rational basis review
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Massachusetts Defendant Withdraws Four Guilty Pleas for Drug Crimes
In Commonwealth v. Martin, a Massachusetts court considered a drug case in which a defendant filed motions to withdraw four guilty pleas related to 30 drug offenses. The case arose during the investigation of the defendant's boyfriend. Contraband was discovered in the defendant's car, a search warrant was executed at the defendant's home, and a controlled buy was conducted with the defendant's boyfriend's half-brother. After the investigation, there were four sets of indictments involving 12 substantive drug crimes involving cocaine trafficking, as well as school zone and conspiracy charges. The defendant pled guilty to the 30 drug offenses. All six of the cocaine trafficking charges were reduced to a lesser offense: possession with intent to distribute. She pled guilty to these and all remaining charges except a charge of possession to distribute a class D substance, a school zone violation, and a firearm violation. She was sentenced to 5-8 years in…
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Columbia University–New York Hospital...cont
Plaintiff's obstetrical expert opined that during plaintiff's mother's near 24–hour labor, plaintiff experienced multiple late decelerations indicative of placental insufficiency causing fetal hypoxia. He opined that it was a departure for staff to deliver plaintiff vaginally with Pitocin augmentation under these circumstances. He explained that diminished beat-to-beat heart rate variability, coupled with late decelerations, enhances the likelihood that the fetus is experiencing significant hypoxia. Plaintiff's expert examined the fetal heart monitoring strips in great detail and opined that by 11:52 P.M. on December 10, 2003, at the latest, prompt injury delivery was essential to prevent further hypoxic-ischemic insult. Plaintiff's pediatric neurologist noted that in addition to plaintiff's initial hypotonic, or “floppy” state, there was facial bruising, cephalohematoma, abdominal petechiae and separated sutures, all indicative…
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The Confrontation Clause and Reliability of Evidence
Today the Supreme Court heard argument in Ohio v. Clark. The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment limits the use of out-of-court statements of people who do not testify as witnesses in the criminal trial, but exactly where that line is drawn has been a problem for a long time. From the 1980 decision in Ohio v. Roberts until the 2004 decision in Crawford v. Washington, the focus was on the reliability of the statement. Crawford threw that overboard and asked if a statement was "testimonial." Under this rule, the reliability of the statement is at best irrelevant to whether it is excluded by the Confrontation Clause, and often the rule operates perversely, letting less reliable statements in while excluding more reliable ones.Some of the Justices have been uncomfortable with that ever since, and that discomfort showed in today's argument over the statement of an abused child to his teacher.So far, Justice Thomas has been alone in his…
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The Ohio Field Sobriety Test
There is no feeling quite like looking in your rearview mirror while driving to see the red and blue flashing lights of a police car. The sick feeling only intensifies when the police inform you that you are being pulled over because you are suspected of operating your vehicle while under the influence of alcohol, ...Read More » The post The Ohio Field Sobriety Test appeared first on .
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Illinois Counties With the Highest DUI Arrests
Thanks to improved awareness, harsher penalties, and significant legislative efforts, drunk driving fatalities in Illinois have decreased by over 37 percent between 2002 and 2012. Alcohol-impaired driving remains a serious problem in Illinois and throughout the country. In the United Staes in 2013, one person every 52 minutes was killed due to a drunk driving accident. In 1982, former Secretary of State and Governor Jim Edgar helped found the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists (AAIM), an independent non-profit group and Illinois’ first citizens’ task force. AAIM recently collected data regarding DUI arrests, accidents, and fatalities in 2013. Of the individuals who died in motor vehicle crashes in 2013, 35 percent of the fatalities were a result of alcohol impairment. AAIM Executive Director Rita Kreslin indicated that Illinois has approximately 350 drunk driving-related deaths per year. AAIM collected data regarding the…
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Restitution for Rewards
Suppose a crime victim offers a reward related to a crime—money for information leading to the return of stolen property, or perhaps information leading to the apprehension of an assailant. If the reward works and leads to a person’s conviction, may the court order the defendant to pay the victim restitution for the reward? Today’s […]
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Marijuana Cultivation, Other Felony Charges for Spanish Fork Couple
On Thursday, Feb. 26, a husband and wife in Spanish Fork were arrested on suspicion of marijuana cultivation for an operation set up in a shed on their property. The couple was booked into the Utah County Jail and is being investigated for numerous other felony and misdemeanor offenses. That’s Why You Buy an RV […] The post Marijuana Cultivation, Other Felony Charges for Spanish Fork Couple appeared first on Salt Lake Criminal Defense.
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Ocala Man Arrested on Child Pornography Charges
According to the Marion County Sheriff’s Office, police arrested an Ocala man Friday morning on 20 counts of possession of child pornography. The 51-year-old man turned himself in at the Marion County Jail and was booked in at 10:45 a.m., according to the Sheriff’s Office. He declined to speak with detectives. The police began investigating the case after a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the North Florida Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. Police believe the man possessed child pornography and had transmitted it through his email for several years, according to a Sheriff’s Office news release. On Tuesday, authorities executed a search warrant at the man’s home where they seized several computers and cellphones containing “hundreds of child pornography images.” The man was being held at the Marion County Jail on Friday in lieu of $200,000 bond. Whether you are accused of possessing child…
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The Detroit Police Department’s Narcotics Unit – Investigating the Investigators
Detroit Narcotics Lawyer Over the last few months, the Detroit Police Department’s (DPD) Narcotics Unit has been and currently remains under scrutiny for one of its team’s alleged mishandlings and illegal practices. Police Chief J. Craig had this division dissolved in the summer of 2014 and since that time has been under investigation from various agencies including internal affairs, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. House cleaning can sometimes take a while particularly when dealing with fundamental changes in a major organization. As of mid-February 2015, a civil suit has been filed in federal court with Detroit along with named officers in this division as defendants from a marijuana raid in a private home at the end of 2013 in Warren. The Michigan Medical Marijuana Act has had a great deal of attention in Michigan over this last year and is not showing any signs of letting up as this…
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A Smear Job by a Sitting Federal Judge
Are you in favor of the system of stern federal sentencing that has helped reduce crime to levels not seen since the Baby Boomers were in grade school?If so, you're not merely mistaken, misguided or uninformed. You're in bed with lynching.That is the level of "argument" -- indeed, that is exactly the argument -- put forth in a new article by a sitting US District Judge, Mark Bennett of Iowa. The article, available here, is titled, "A Slow Motion Lynching? The War on Drugs, Mass Incarceration, Doing Kimbrough Justice, and a Response to Two Third Circuit Judges."Never one to appeal to emotion or fiction, Judge Bennett starts his hatchet job on those who disagree with him with this:The 2014 Best Picture Oscar winner, 12 Years a Slave, is based on the 1853 autobiography by Solomon Northup.1 Northrup, a black freeman in New York, was kidnapped and sold into Southern slavery.2 There is an eternally haunting,…
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Chicago DUI Attorney Comments on License Suspensions for DUI Arrests
This Chicago DUI attorney has posted here and hereabout having your driving privileges taken away before you ever have your first day in court. From the Chicago Tribune:Bureaucratic mix-ups have let thousands of drunken drivers avoid mandatory license suspensions and stay on the roads, a Tribune investigation has found. A Tribune review of state data found case after case across the Chicago area in which the arrest of these drivers—some with repeat DUIs—are not being logged into the state computers to ensure their licenses are suspended. The failures come in a process that still relies on police filling out forms by hand and mailing them to the state, a process rife with human error that frustrates anti-DUI advocates. “There are so many ways for things to get lost,” said Cathy Stanley, with Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists. “Nothing is instantaneously done or efficiently done like it should…
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Reckless Driving for Going Too Fast in the Snow
Virginia gets its fair share of winter weather but it does seem to catch us by surprise every year, and every year I get calls for people who got reckless driving tickets during the winter storms. One common ticket that I hear about quite frequently is a reckless driving charge for going too fast for road conditions when it’s snowing or there’s other winter weather. What can you do about this kind of a case? A ticket for going too fast for road conditions is definitely a subjective situation. There’s no objective standard such as a reckless driving by speed cases where the officer simply has to testify that his radar or speedometer read a certain number. For a case where there’s adverse road conditions such as snow or ice, the officer is going to have to prove to the judge’s satisfaction that you were in fact reckless not just that you were maybe going a little too fast. Unfortunately, the judges in Virginia tend to defer quite a bit to the…
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Jury seated and ready for opening arguments in Boston bombing trial
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"Mitch McConnell’s Love Affair with Hemp"
The title of this post is the headline of this lengthy new Politico article, which carries this sub-headline: "How the Kentucky senator picked a fight with the DEA and became one of Washington’s top drug policy reformers." Here is how the story gets started: Last May, a shipment of 250...<img src="//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/MarijuanaLaw/~4/ziIdMqJyWDM" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
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Senate bill would restrict DPS to gathering thumbprints at license renewals
State Sen. Charles Schwertner has a good bill (SB 398) up tomorrow in the Senate Transportation Committee clarifying the statute which the Department of Public Safety had interpreted broadly to claim they could gather all ten fingerprints when Texans renewed their drivers licenses. Schwertner's bill leaves DPS' authority where it was after the last time the Legislature considered this issue in 2003 and 2005: thumbprints only, or the index finger if thumbprints cannot be taken.Make me Philospher King and Grits would probably rescind the gathering of thumbprints, too, but I do admit that the ability to match thumbprints contributes to preventing drivers license fraud. That's why I was satisfied, if not entirely pleased, with the 2005 compromise. DPS' unilateral decision to start gathering all ten fingerprints demonstrates the slippery-slope risk whenever such authority is granted. Thumbprints gathered for the purposes of verifying drivers license information…
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