Judicial Recusal
My colleague Michael Crowell recently published a paper on judicial recusal, available here as a free download. It includes a discussion of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Caperton v. […]
Are Judges Underpaid?
Stephen Larson, a federal district judge in California, resigned recently, citing his low salary. (District judges make $169,300 per year.) This has resulted in a robust discussion of whether federal […]
Notice, Drinking, and Intensive Probation
Back in July the court of appeals decided State v. Hubbard, a probation revocation case that I mentioned in passing but never really discussed in depth. In Hubbard the defendant’s […]
Keep Your Eyes on the Road, Your Hands Upon the Wheel
I blogged here about a new law, that prohibits texting while driving effective December 1, 2009. Texting while driving is an infraction, a non-criminal violation of the law, punishable by […]
Computer Searches and Plain View
Computers and electronic storage media can hold massive quantities of data. At approximately 30,000 pages per gigabyte, a low-end laptop computer with a 250 gigabyte hard drive can store the […]
The Unwelcome Prayer for Judgment Continued
Defendants are generally pretty happy to get a PJC. When a judge continues prayer for judgment the defendant avoids punishment and is often able to sidestep a car insurance rate […]
Officers Doing Blood Draws?
The Associated Press just published this story about a federal program in Idaho and Texas in which officers are trained to draw blood from people suspected of impaired driving. The […]
The Court of Appeals Weighs in on Vehicle Searches after Gant
The court of appeals released a batch of opinions yesterday. Several are interesting and important, and there were an unusually large number of opinions in favor of defendants, including some […]
News Roundup
Several recent news items may be of interest to readers of this blog: 1. FBI data shows that violent crimes, and especially homicides, dropped again last year and are now […]
Inconsistent Verdicts
Further Update: See Shea Denning’s post here about State v. Mumford, in which the court of appeals held that “logically inconsistent and legally contradictory” verdicts cannot stand. It has the […]