For some mentally ill defendants, alternative sentencingoptions aren’t available, they might not be eligible for court ordered treatment under Laura’s Lawor the treatment failed, or perhaps they have been in a repetitive cycle of Penal Code section 1368 mental incompetencytreatment. Whatever the failures of the justice system to adequately…
Continuing my discussion on mental illness and the criminal justice system, I now turn to a little-known California law that was enacted in 2002, known as Laura’s Law. This legislation, codified in the California Welfare and Institutions Code, sections 5345 et seq., permits the court to order certain persons…
As a criminal defense attorney in Orange County, I am sometimes left with the heart-wrenching task of helping the parents of an adult child with a mental illness wind their way through our state justice system; a system that often leaves no room for opportunities to address the underlying…
Most criminal convictions require a showing of intent or an understanding that an act or omission will result in the commission of a crime. This is expressed by the Latin term “mens rea,” which as “guilty mind.” In common law and up to this day, this standard has been…
I have previously writtenon these pages about the alleged prosecutorial misconduct by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office—misconduct that made national headlines. That incident prompted the California Legislature to introduce and enact a new lawthat that punishes California prosecutors who tamper with or withhold exculpatory evidence. Prosecutorial misconduct is a…
Have you sent your spit to one of the genetic-testing companies? It can be interesting to find out our DNA ancestry and perhaps proactive to learn if you might be genetically predisposed to certain health risks. And the police are interested in your DNA profile too. In the 1970’s…
Did you see the 2002 movie Minority Report? Back then, it was science fiction; now it’s getting close to reality. In Minority Report, police departments had “PreCrime” units where “precogs” (strange psychic bodies that lived in liquid pools) were able to predict when a person was going to commit…
In 2017, Stanford Law School’s Justice Advocacy Project studied the long-running problem of mental illness among prison inmates in California. Using data provided by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), the Justice Advocacy Project studied the continuing trend, concluding that the problem is getting worse. According to…
Imagine being charged, convicted, and serving years in prison for a crime you did not commit. As I have documented, this happens more than anyone cares to think about. With the advent of DNA evidence analysis, hundreds of individuals have been freed from prison based on DNA testing that…
A person who is not a citizen of the United States—even one who is legally residing in this country—can be permanently deported if he or she has committed certain crimes. I discussed thisin greater detail last year. Immigration law is administered by the federal government but most often, a…