Articles in the Uncategorized category - Page 87 of 154

May a law enforcement officer submit an application for an investigative order to a judicial official, or does that constitute the unauthorized practice of law? The answer depends on the type of order sought, as a letter of caution issued last week by the State Bar’s Authorized Practice Committee reveals.

Late last week a Pennsylvania jury convicted Bill Cosby of three counts of sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004.  A prior trial involving the same offenses ended in a deadlocked jury mistrial.  Cosby faces up to 30 years in prison, but news reports suggest that he is unlikely to receive the maximum sentence.  Cosby has faced years of accusations that he had a regular practice of drugging and sexually assaulting women.  Keep reading for more news.

When a search warrant application fails to establish probable cause, the problem isn’t normally that the applicant didn’t have probable cause. It’s that the applicant failed to include important facts that he or she knew. An example of the phenomenon is State v. Lewis, decided this week by the court of appeals.

Two incidents of mass murder made national headlines this week, one occurred in Nashville, Tennessee, and the other in Toronto, Canada.  Early Sunday morning, Travis Reinking killed four people and wounded two others with an AR-15 style rifle at a Waffle House in Nashville.  After being disarmed by a customer, Reinking fled the scene, sparking a 34-hour manhunt that ended when he was discovered in a wooded area a few miles from the Waffle House.  On Monday, Alek Minassian killed ten people and wounded many others by intentionally driving a moving van into pedestrians on a sidewalk in Toronto.  Keep reading for more news.

Last week, the Court of Appeals of North Carolina decided State v. Frederick, a case about whether a controlled purchase of drugs provided probable cause to issue a search warrant. Before you say “the answer is yes, that fact pattern happens all the time,” be aware that Frederick presents a wrinkle. The wrinkle is that the controlled buy was conducted not by a confidential informant, but by an unknown “middleman” who the informant drove to the suspect’s home. Does the injection of an intermediary undermine probable cause? Read on to find out!

Seven inmates were killed and many others were wounded during a prison riot in South Carolina on Sunday night.  Columbia newspaper The State reports that a disagreement over gang territory and contraband erupted into a massive and violent fight that spanned three dormitories at Lee Correctional Institution, a maximum-security facility located between Columbia and Florence.  The report from The State paints a bleak picture of Lee Correctional and other South Carolina prisons, saying that the state’s prisons as a whole “are rife with violence, illegal weapons, and gangs.”  The incident is the nation’s deadliest prison riot in 25 years.  Keep reading for more news.

On Monday morning, the FBI executed a series of search warrants at the home, office, and hotel room of Michael Cohen, a personal attorney for President Donald Trump and a former executive at the Trump Organization.  News reports say that the warrants were sought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York based on a referral by the Office of Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, and that Cohen is under investigation for bank fraud, wire fraud, and campaign finance violations.  Keep reading for more news. 

Today’s post is a little bit different from our usual fare. It doesn’t analyze a recent case or answer a frequently asked question. Instead, it is a message from Mike […]

I was on a plane recently, listening to the usual safety briefing, when I heard the flight attendant say that “it is a violation of federal law” to ignore illuminated safety signs, such as the “fasten seat belt” sign. I was surprised because, on another flight, I had overheard a flight attendant tell a passenger who wanted to use the bathroom while the “fasten seat belt” sign was illuminated that she couldn’t authorize him to get out of his seat but that she wouldn’t stop him either. The sense I got from that previous exchange was that the sign was essentially a recommendation. So, I decided to look into it.

Wednesday was the 50^th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the country has celebrated his legacy this week while also reflecting on our national obligation to continue to work towards a society of equal justice.  The Associated Press has republished selections of its contemporaneous coverage of King’s assassination, and the News Hour aired a segment discussing King’s enduring influence on campaigns for civil rights.  Keep reading for more news.