We all know Miranda warnings. ‘You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you. You have the right to have an attorney present. If you cannot afford to hire an attorney, one will be appointed for you free of charge.’ This month is the 55th anniversary of Miranda v. […]
The way that Leiby Kletzky died is indeed horrifying. The eight-year-old child was walking home from day camp in his closely-knit Jewish community in Brooklyn. He took a wrong turn and asked a stranger for directions. His body parts were later found in a dump truck and in the refrigerator of the man suspected of […]
Theodore Roosevelt once said: “No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it. . . . Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor.” Central to the American form of government is […]
The United States Supreme Court just decided a case concerning whether police officers who smelled marijuana could search an apartment without a warrant. The decision has been attacked by criminal lawyers and privacy advocates, but the ruling is not as broad or bad as they suggest. In Kentucky v. King, uniformed officers who observed an […]
For those of us who followed the news of the tragic shooting in Arizona, it is probably no surprise that U.S. District Court Judge Larry Burns declared the suspect, Jared Loughner, incompetent to stand trial. Mr. Loughner was expelled from community college last fall because of his disturbing outbursts in class. His Facebook page revealed […]
John Damjanjuk, the Ohio autoworker who was deported to Germany on charges of Nazi war crimes, was found guilty by a Munich judge this month of complicity in the mass murder of 28,000 people at the Sobibor death camp in Poland. In the 1980’s, Mr. Demjanjuk was stripped of his U.S. citizenship. He then faced […]
We do not yet know the full extent of the corruption among law enforcement in Contra Costa County. Four current and former cops are facing criminal charges. The allegations against these dirty officers are so colorful that the criminal complaints read like a novel by John Grisham. Operating a brothel. Gaming the family court system […]
An African-American attorney who is the manager of the Felony Unit of the San Francisco Public Defender has filed a lawsuit challenging his own stop and search by the Alameda County Sheriffs. In the lawsuit, Kwixuan Maloof alleges that a deputy of the Alameda Sheriffs Department stopped him in his car for a flimsy reason, […]
In the largest insider trading case in history, the defense announced that it would rest without the defendant taking the stand and testifying. The decision of the founder of Galleon Group Raj Rajaratnam not to testify highlights the important choice that a defendant and his or her attorney makes. Jurors are told that criminal defendants […]
At his jury trial last week, Barry Bonds was not found guilty of perjury for lying to the grand jury about whether he usedo; not found guilty of perjury for lying to the grand jury about whether he used human growth hormone; and not found guilty of perjury for lying to the grand jury about […]
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