Even since California legalized medical marijuana nearly 20 years ago, and especially since Arizona, Oregon and Washington moved forward with various significant marijuana reforms, the far west has been the US region to watch most closely for those interested in both the legal and practical dynamics of marijuana reform. And...<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/MarijuanaLaw/~4/swYxmuzBXHg" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
Nevada as interesting marijuana reform state to watch now and through 2016
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Three Lessons for Investigators from the FIFA Scandal
These are still early days for the scandal engulfing world soccer, but in the indictments and other stories emerging we see three distinct features crucial for most successful investigations. We have written about all of them, but rarely are they captured so well in one single story so famously told as the one about FIFA. 1. What is a not a matter of public record in one country may be available in another. A few days after the indictments were made public in New York, the Wall Street Journal reported on Nike’s entanglement in the FIFA probe. Nike is not accused of any wrongdoing, but in this story we get a fascinating look at what would otherwise be a secret contract between Nike and the Brazilian football authorities. How? The contract was made public in a Brazilian legislative inquiry. All that was necessary was for the newspaper to find it and translate it from Portuguese. We do a lot of investigations that involve U.S.…
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Nebraska sheriffs vote unanimously to support effort to resuscitate state's death penalty
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His Own Private Iowa
The other Mark W. Bennett, the one confirmed by the United States Senate, found himself in an untenable, and unacceptable, situation, as told by Eli Saslow in the Washington Post. U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett entered and everyone stood. He sat and then they sat. “Another hard one,” he said, and the room fell silent. He was one of 670 federal district judges in the United States, appointed for life by a president and confirmed by the Senate, and he had taken an oath to “administer justice” in each case he heard. Now he read the sentencing documents at his bench and punched numbers into an oversize calculator. When he finally looked up, he raised his hands together in the air as if his wrists were handcuffed, and then he repeated the conclusion that had come to define so much about his career. “My hands are tied on your sentence,” he said. “I’m sorry. This isn’t up to me.” These are perverse words for a United…
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Starting remarks to start Ohio Marijuana Policy Reform Symposium
As regular readers know, the exciting the Ohio Marijuana Policy Reform Symposium (details here) is taking place today,June 11, 2015, at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Though formal registration is over, because there is no charge for attending this exciting Symposium at Ohio State, I encourage anyone...<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/MarijuanaLaw/~4/nSSMjNGFaqU" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
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Sooooo excited for Ohio Marijuana Policy Reform Symposium
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Divorce After a Long-Term Marriage
Divorce (called dissolution of marriage in Washington) after a long-term marriage can be especially difficult. Families, finances, housing, and emotions have likely become well enmeshed after twenty or more years of marriage. The procedure to end a long-term marriage is the same as the procedure to end a short or medium-term marriage, but there are certain issues that become especially important in long-term marriages. Retirement is among the greatest concerns for couples that have spent twenty plus years together. If both spouses worked earning roughly the same amount of retirement benefits each year of marriage, the process can be as simple as dividing the retirement assets equally. But in situations where one party has earned less retirement benefits than the other party or has earned no retirement benefits at all, this can be a more difficult process. It is important to consider the future retirement benefit earning potential of each party. One of the main…
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Crowe on Fraud and Consent in Australian Rape Law
Jonathan Crowe (The University of Queensland - T.C. Beirne School of Law) has posted Fraud and Consent in Australian Rape Law (Criminal Law Journal, 38 4: 236-249, 2014) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This article examines the circumstances in...
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Iowa Court of Appeals Overturns February 2013 Murder Conviction of 24-year-old Man
In February of 2013, Justin A. Marshall was found guilty of first-degree murder after he allegedly shot John Versypt, a landlord at the Broadway Condominium Complex in southeastern Iowa City, during an attempted robbery. Police claim that Marshall shot Versypt in the head and hand as he attempted to rob the landlord. On Wednesday June 11, the Iowa Court of Appeals overturned the first-degree murder conviction, finding in their opinion that Marshall should have been allowed to prevent the jury from hearing the testimony of a jail informant who was working for prosecutors in the case. Prosecutors said at trial that Marshall admitted to three Muscaline County Jail inmates that he had shot the landlord in a robbery gone wrong. Prosecutors also said there were other witnesses who confirmed facts the defendant had admitted to while incarcerated. Carl Johnson, one of the witnesses, was in jail in 2011 on federal drug charges when Marshall was brought to Iowa from Texas to stand trial…
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Second Circuit Rejects Argument that it Should Review Evidence in Government’s Favor After Government Lost Motion to Suppress
Last week in U.S. v. Bershchansky, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed an order suppressing physical evidence and statements obtained during the execution of a search warrant after agents exceeded the warrant’s scope by searching the wrong apartment. The court determined that the warrantless search violated the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights and that the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule did not save the evidence from suppression. Before reaching those conclusions, however, the court had to decide what standard of review to apply to the district court’s factual findings on the underlying motion. The court rejected the government’s proposed standard but left the question of the correct standard open for another day.
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OWI (DUI) in Michigan - Location Matters
If you wind up facing a DUI charge in the Metropolitan Detroit area, one of the first questions any DUI lawyer will ask is, "Where?" In this article, I want to briefly overview how location matters in a Michigan operating while intoxicated (OWI) case. To be clear, I am going to shift the focus away from things like which court is tougher, which one charges more money and all of the other specifics that we could examine (until the end of time, no less), and look at the bigger picture. Just about everyone knows that for all things criminal, and particularly with respect to DUI cases, Oakland County is the toughest in Metro-Detroit's "Tri-County area (Wayne, Oakland and Macomb). This is not to say that either Macomb County or Wayne County go easy on DUI drivers, but as a rule of thumb, just about everything is tougher in Oakland. For every rule, of course, there is an exception. There are a couple of courts in Macomb County, for example, that are, on…
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From Solitary to the Street
NPR In prison, Brian Nelson lived in solitary confinement. That meant 23 hours a day in a small cell. No human contact, except with guards — for 12 years straight. Then, his prison sentence for murder was over. One moment he was locked down. The next, he was free. NPR and The Marshall Project, an online journalism group that focuses on the criminal justice system, investigated the
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Coming Straight Home From Solitary Damages Inmates and their Families
NPR The thing Sara Garcia remembers from the day her son, Mark, got out of prison was the hug — the very, very awkward hug. He had just turned 21 and for the past two and a half years, he'd been in solitary confinement. "He's not used to anyone touching him," Garcia says. "So he's not used to hugs. And I mean we grabbed him. I mean, we hugged him. We held him. I mean, it was just surreal
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After A Year Of Freedom, Parolee Kevin Monteiro Still Carries Weight Of His Past -
NPR One year ago -- on June 10, 2014 -- Kevin Monteiro was released after nearly 30 years in prison for second-degree murder. That day, Monteiro was dropped off by a prison van at the Greyhound bus station in downtown Denver with a prison-issued debit card, and says he felt completely lost. “I had a hundred dollars in my pocket and a box of books," remembers Monteiro. "No family, nobody.”
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Canvassing the "most likely outcomes" of the SCOTUS case on death penalty drugs
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Married to the Medical Marijuana Patient
Justice Richard BernsteinYesterday, the Michigan Supreme Court, in one of Justice Richard Bernstein's first opinions, held that when a husband-wife medical marijuana operation is not conducted in strict accord with the Medical Marijuana Act, the wife, whose role was limited to assisting with the harvest schedule, is not afforded immunity under the MMA. So let's break that down.In the case, People v Cynthia Mazur, Oakland County Circuit Judge Colleen O'Brien denied defendant's request for immunity under the act because the grow operation conducted within the marital home was not in accord with the provisions of the MMA. Ms Mazur's role in the operation was limited to writing-out the harvest schedule of the pot plants on sticky notes.Defendant's husband was both a registered marijuana patient as well as a care-provider. Ms. Mazur, however, was neither.She appealed the trial court's denial of her request for immunity, but the Michigan Court of…
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"'Frightening and High': The Frightening Sloppiness of the High Court's Sex Crime Statistics"
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CFPB Issues Final Rule Governing Non-Bank Auto Lenders
This week, the CFPB issued a long-anticipated final rule under which it will, for the first time, allow the Bureau to supervise non-bank auto finance companies. Although the Bureau currently supervises the auto financing activities of banks and credit unions, the new rule will define as “larger participants” in the “automobile financing” market any non-bank company that has at least 10,000 “annual originations” of consumer auto finance products, including auto loans, refinancings, and leases. According to the CFPB, this definition includes 34 of the nation’s largest non-bank auto finance companies, which together original approximately 90% of non-bank auto loans and leases in the United States. Although the rule does not impose new substantive consumer protection requirements, it allows the Bureau to supervise auto finance companies under the Dodd-Frank Act, monitoring them for compliance with consumer financial…
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Chicago Drug Crimes Conviction Can Lead to Deportation
If you are convicted of a Chicago drug crime, whether misdemeanor or felony, you face a lengthy prison sentence and hefty fines. If you are not an American citizen, whether an illegal immigrant or a lawful permanent resident, you also face the possibility of being deported. Deportation for Drug Crimes Conviction The United States federal code allows for the deportation of any alien convicted of conspiracy to violate, attempted violation or violation of a state controlled substance law (other than a single offense of possession of less than 30 grams of personal use marijuana) that relates to a federally banned substance. The federal code outlines specific substances that are considered controlled substances that could lead to deportation. This is an important distinction in the law. State and federal law are not always in lock-step regarding what is considered a controlled substance. If an illegal immigrant is convicted of a drug crime under state law, and the controlled…
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Court Finds Newman Did Not Change Pleading Standard Under FRCP 8 and 9
Southern District of New York Judge J. Paul Oetken has denied a motion to reconsider his earlier decision declining to dismiss insider trading charges against Dhia Jafar and Omar Nabulsi. As we explained more fully here, the SEC contends that Jafar and Nabulsi traded on inside information about two biotech deals in 2013. Both times, the defendants bought securities before a Canadian journalist, appearing to rely on inside information, published articles that sent the relevant share prices up. The SEC does not know “the identity of the tipper nor how the tip was relayed to Defendants,” and accordingly it has not pleaded those facts. The defendants argue that the complaint should be dismissed for failure to satisfy US v. Newman, the Second Circuit’s intervening decision requiring proof that a tippee knew the tipper provided inside information in exchange for a personal benefit.
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