In 2015, Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals removed the Orange County District Attorney’s Office from the trial of Scott Dekraai, who was accused and since convicted of the worst mass murder in Orange County. Judge Goethals booted the District Attorney’s Office from the case after an investigation…
Look up in the sky! No, it’s not Superman, it’s a drone. Well, maybe some of you are too young to get the reference but drones are becoming a modern version of Superman. They can, and are, being used to ferret out criminal activity and fight forest fires. They…
On a recent afternoon, a Texas grandmother discovered that her two granddaughters, aged 12 and 5, were missing from her home. Her car was missing too. Imaging the worse—that her granddaughters have been kidnapped from her home and forcibly taken in her car by the kidnapper—she called 911 to…
YOUR PET CAN SEND YOU TO PRISON You could be charged for a crime your animal “commits.” Okay, animals can’t commit crimes but this is serious stuff. If your dog attacks a person or worse yet, kills someone, you can be facing some very serious criminal charges. But it needn’t…
THE FIRST RULE TO FOLLOW AFTER AN ARREST: REMAIN SILENT EXCEPT TO REQUEST AN ATTORNEY There is a scene in the Showtime series “Billions” where one of the characters is arrested by the F.B.I. for financial fraud. As he is read his Miranda rights and led away in handcuffs, he…
THE TERRY STOP – “STOP AND FRISK” DETENTION You’ve seen it in the movies and on TV shows: The police approach a person on the street or tell them to get out of a vehicle after a traffic stop and command the person to submit to a frisk. In my…
WHY ARE SO MANY PEOPLE LOCKED UP IN THE UNITED STATES? In last week’s post, I discussed the high prison population in the United States relative to other countries. According to all available statistics, the U.S. leads the world in the incarceration of its population per capita. This statistic paints…
According to the London-based International Centre for Prison Studies (ICPS), which is an arm of the University of London Law School Institute for Criminal Policy Research, the United State ranks 2nd in the world for the number of prisoners locked up per capita. Based on the latest statistics (2014), only…
INTERROGATE UNTIL THEY CONFESS In 1989, a female jogger was brutally assaulted and raped when she was jogging through Central Park. Five males, ages 14 to 16 at the time, were arrested and confessed to the crime. They were tried and convicted in two separate trials. They became known as…
The police regularly use confidential informants to gather information about criminal activity. The use of confidential informants is legal and an important tool in law enforcement’s tool box. But the practice of recruiting jail house informants is often illegal. So what’s the difference? Most people in jail are represented…