Until yesterday, we had a relatively clear rule for police to follow: an anonymous tip must be corroborated before it rises to the level necessary to seize a person.  Then the Supreme Court decided Navarette v. California.  Interestingly, the 5-4 majority opinion was written by Clarence Thomas, with the dissent penned by Nino Scalia. Now I realize that people think I’m loopy for not hating Nino as much as I should, but it’s cases like this that should remind us of why he’s so much fun on the Court.

The majority held that an anon tip, of the sort that once needed corroboration, doesn’t really.

By reporting that she had been run off the road by a specific vehicle—a silver Ford F-150 pickup, license plate 8D94925—the caller necessarily claimed eyewitness knowledge of the alleged dangerous driving. That basis of knowledge lends significant support to the tip’s reliability.

There is also reason to think that the 911 caller in this case was telling the truth. Police confirmed the truck’s location near mile marker 69 (roughly 19 highway miles south of the location reported in the 911 call) at 4:00 p.m.(roughly 18 minutes after the 911 call). That timeline of events suggests that the caller reported the incident soon after she was run off the road. That sort of contemporaneous report has long been treated as especially reliable.

Another indicator of veracity is the caller’s use of the 911 emergency system. A 911 call has some features that allow for identifying and tracing callers, and thus provide some safeguards against making false reports with immunity.

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A recurring question is why criminal defense lawyers are underrepresented in government positions, whether judicial, legislative or executive. The easy answer is that we’re easy targets, having spent our careers as gladiators, defenders of the Constitution and, as the NACDL slogan goes, Liberty’s Last Champions.

Actually, we don’t sound half bad when you put it that way. But then, nobody puts it that way.  This is more the way we’re described:

Not only does it pander to ignorance and prejudice, but it’s awfully effective in smearing a candidate for office.  After all, even if you’re not entirely inclined to hate criminal defense lawyers for their role in the criminal justice system, Continue reading →

Cops conducted an illegal search of a house. So far, nothing new here. Cops found nothing. Still, nothing new. Cops decide to plant meth in the house. Interesting, but nearly impossible to prove. Cops get caught on their own dashcam talking about it. Bingo!

From Courthouse News:

A police car dash cam captured Santa Clara deputies plotting to plant drugs in a woman’s home after their first illegal search turned up nothing, the woman claims in court.

Allison Ross, who was arrested after the second search of her home, sued the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department, its crime lab, Sheriff Laurie Smith, and 12 of her officers, in Federal Court.

Someone always asks, can the cops be so stupid that they would forget there is video and audio running, and talk about it openly?  Well, apparently so, Continue reading →

Aside from the thousands of spam emails, scam emails and garbage story pitches that arrive at a blawger’s inbox, there comes an occasional “pitch” from a family for some attention to their wrongly convicted, innocent family member.  They want help. If not legal, then publicity.  They hope to grab attention for their cause.

These concern me, not only because of my natural inclination to be concerned about the wrongfully convicted, but because it’s hard to grab interest in the digital world where we’re constantly deluged with horror stories. We become inured to them, and grow somewhat cold to the “grave injustice” done any individual.  We shouldn’t, but we do.  It’s information overload.

So when a plea for attention arrives, I try to look, to see whether there is something I can and should do.  That’s easier said than done. Continue reading →

Come on, you know where this is going.  Via Newsday:

About half of all 16- to 18-year-olds coming into New York City’s jails say they had a traumatic brain injury before being incarcerated, most caused by assaults, according to a new study that’s the latest in a growing body of research documenting head trauma among young offenders.

Experts say the findings, published this week in The Journal of Adolescent Health, could lead to better training for correction officers on how to deal with the possible symptoms of such trauma, which include problems with impulse control and decision-making.

To those of us whose job it is to defend these youths, this comes as little surprise.  We talk to them, listen to them, watch them and shake our heads as they walk away.  We see the lack of impulse control.  We hear how an astoundingly poor choice is made at a critical juncture.  And there they are, in a meeting with a criminal defense lawyer. Continue reading →

The New York Times Opinionator column offered a hard slap in the face to every helicopter mom: Parental involvement does not necessarily enhance a child’s educational future.  Based on a three-decade longitudinal study, University of Texas sociology prof Keith Robinson and Duke sociology prof Angela Harris reported their findings:

Most people, asked whether parental involvement benefits children academically, would say, “of course it does.” But evidence from our research suggests otherwise. In fact, most forms of parental involvement, like observing a child’s class, contacting a school about a child’s behavior, helping to decide a child’s high school courses, or helping a child with homework, do not improve student achievement. In some cases, they actually hinder it.

This, of course, cannot possibly be.  After all, everyone knows that the more involved parents are in their children’s education, the better off children will be. Schools say so. The government says so, and has passed laws, rules and regs based on it, and, well, everybody knows. Everybody. Continue reading →

Amongst lawyers, there isn’t much talk of Avvo anymore. Way back when, Avvo was not merely an upstart challenging the hegemony of Martindale-Hubbell’s lawyer ratings, which were utterly meaningless to anyone outside of the profession (what the heck does “AV Preeminent” mean to a normal person?), but an opportunity for lawyers to lay claim to a numerical rating they could promote to consumers that would be understandable and, assuming the consumer naïve enough, persuasive.

Yeah, it was nonsensical, but that’s not a bug in the internet age.  The problem for Avvo, of course, is that there is no money to be made in handing out free ratings.  So in the dark of night, Avvo morphed from a lawyer rating service to a lawyer marketing.  And much to my surprise and chagrin, Avvo has made a go of it.

Avvo has attracted $37.5 million in fresh capital, a huge capital infusion that the Seattle company will use to grow its marketplace for matching attorneys and clients. Total funding in Avvo — founded seven years ago by former Expedia general counsel Mark Britton — now stands at $60.5 million. Continue reading →

A continuing issue with the police is that they take care of their own, meaning that the rules they apply to the rest of us, often with far more force than can possibly be justified, don’t apply to them.  Yet, the Gothamist offers a story that defies this:

Authorities say that at 2:33 a.m. on Thursday, 30-year-old Jeffrey Balzotti, an NYPD sergeant, was arrested while allegedly driving drunk within the confines of the 10th precinct. He was charged with a DWI and driving recklessly.

On Friday morning, at around 4:30 a.m., the NYPD says Jose Vanderpool, a 30-year-old police officer, was pulled over in Queens and charged with a DWI. The Post reports he was involved in a collision on 32nd Avenue in Jackson Heights, and refused a breathalyzer.

And less than an hour later at 5:05 a.m., authorities say NYPD sergeant Donald Stewart, 34, was arrested near Fulton and Boyland Streets in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. He was also charged with a DWI.

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In response to the question of why, Nebraska Senior District Court Judge Richard Kopf provided a candid and detailed answer.  His answer consists of nine points, delivered with his usual aplomb and sense of humor, and with remarkable honesty.

This is noted because it’s easy to offer pat answers, the ones we fall back on regularly to win the point and avoid reproach, but which aren’t true.  Judge Kopf has answered with unvarnished truth, which is why he gets himself into a jam on the interwebz so often.

By my reading, Judge Kopf has largely validated Harold’s revelations, that it’s just a matter of going with the odds, and the odds favor the police.  A commenter notes that the explanations bear the scent of rationalizations, to which Judge Kopf asks, what, then, would be his motive to rationalize? I’ll take a stab. Continue reading →

For a case that could have, should have, disappeared with a swift oops and click of the delete button, it has reached a conclusion with the unfortunately unsatisfying result of no one being saved and a government so utterly impotent, incompetent, and unworthy as to warrant a brief chuckle.  If only it wasn’t our government.

The pathetic tale of how Stanford Ph.D. student Rahinah Ibrahim wound up on the no-fly list, not for any distant, evil conspiracy, or hyper-technical connection to anyone whose underpants might potentially burst into flames, but because someone getting a government paycheck ticked the wrong box, was bad enough. So someone screwed up. You’re a big country, United States. Own up to the error, fix it, apologize and move on.  But no, that wasn’t the way it would happen. And no, we may be large in size, but puny in spirit.

The trial was a fiasco, with the government screwing the opposition in deceitful, absurd ways.  Judge William Haskell Alsup, of the Northern District of California, was making all the right noises to suggest that he was about to explode, to teach the disingenuous lying scumbags who claim to represent us a damn good lesson.  But when the last huff and puff was over, it turned out to be no more than noise, the empty threats that never seem to happen when the targets of vitriol suck the government’s teet. Continue reading →