The Netflix surprise hit over the recent holiday season was the documentary Making a Murderer. The story this documentary told was so engrossing that many people reported finishing all ten one-hour episodes within a day or two. Now that’s binge watching! What compelled so many to devour this docu-series…
The California Attorney General is responsible for collecting and analyzing yearly crime data for the State of California. Guess what? Crime is down in California – way down! According to the Attorney General’s statistics for the most recent year studied (2014) crime has decreased in number and rate in…
TV star Charlie Sheen recently revealed that he is HIV positive. Mr. Sheen’s lifestyle is no secret, for years the tabloids have chronicled his seemingly non-stop partying, his coterie of “goddesses” and his many sexual escapades. According to Mr. Sheen’s revelation, he has known he was HIV positive for at…
California’s Proposition 47, which was considered a controversial measure, appears to be producing the results it was intended for. However, there are still those skeptics who question whether or not the desired results are being met. But, according to reports by the Stanford Justice Advocacy Project, any criticism of Prop…
DOES CRIME INCREASE WHEN THE WEATHER IS HOT? With the seemingly endless summer in Southern California and a very hot autumn this year, should we be more concerned about crime? Everyone knows that crime increases in hot weather, right? Well, not so fast. Several studies have disputed that oft cited…
A bill recently signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown requires California’s public alert system to help in the effort to track down hit-and-run drivers. The new law uses emergency “yellow alerts” to broadcast the key details of fleeing hit-and-run vehicles. On digital freeway signs, the car’s color, make, model…
CALIFORNIA ENDS GRAND JURY HEARINGS IN FATAL POLICE SHOOTINGS California is the first state to announce that it will ban grand juries in the preliminary determination on whether a law enforcement office should face criminal charges after killing someone in the line of duty. The reasoning behind the ban, which…
A California arrest warrant authorizes law enforcement to arrest and apprehend you if you are suspected of committing a crime outside of the presence of an officer. Judges issue arrest warrants based upon the evidence presented to them by an officer or District Attorney. Also, an arrest warrant can be…
There is no functional difference between temporary and permanent insanity under California law. The sole issue in California is the status of the defendant’s sanity at the time of the crime. The method of determining a defendant’s sanity is the two pronged M’Naghten rule. 1) The first prong requires a defendant to understand…
As temperatures rise going into spring and summer, so does the risk of vehicular hyperthermia for children left inside hot vehicles. Each year since 1998 an average of 38 children have died in hot cars in the U.S. Although these tragedies occur nationally, California is one of only 20 states…