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Recent blog posts

Jail Fees

With new legislation placing more inmates in the county jail—and with budgets continuing to be tight—I’ve been getting a lot of questions about jail fees. I’ve written about them in […]

News Roundup

This will be the last post of 2011. I’m off next week and many of our readers are, too. It’s been a fantastic year on the blog. We rocketed past […]

Scrooge in Alabama?

It’s the end of the year. The criminal justice system is slowing down a little bit for the holidays, but other activity is ramping up. For many parents, making a […]

Now Where Are We with Drug ID?

Several earlier posts (here, here, here and here) and this article discuss the North Carolina Supreme Court’s ruling in State v. Ward, 364 N.C. 133 (2010), that the identification of […]

News Roundup

Happy belated Bill of Rights Day! The end of the year is supposed to be slow, but this week has been completely full of criminal justice news. Among the major […]

Unavailability under Crawford

Under the new Crawford confrontation clause test, testimonial hearsay statements by declarants who do not testify at trial may not be admitted unless the declarant is unavailable and there has […]

Gang Signs

A caller recently asked me whether it is a crime to use gang signs. First, some background. According to one gang expert, “each gang has their own gang hand signs […]