The U.S. Supreme Court, in Fernandez v. California, has upheld the warrantless search of an apartment when the suspect objected, but his girlfriend (and co-occupant) consented to the search after the suspect was arrested. The court made an exception to its prior decision in Georgia v. Randolph, which held police cannot search a home when one person who lives there objects and the other consents. Factual Summary Police officers observed a suspect in a violent robbery run into an apartment
Real justice means everyone accused of a crime gets a fair process to defend against the accusations. In many cases due process happens. Our system of justice, however, requires that occurs in all cases. This isn’t exactly an onerous requirement. It starts with the truth. The truth means… …the whole truth, not a half-truth. A half-truth is a type of lie. A half-truth can make something that is merely a belief appear to be knowledge. A half-truth is a deceptive
Stephen Lemons | New Times As Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery fights to keep Debra Milke behind bars pending a retrial on her overturned murder conviction, he also is fighting a proposed rule to the State Bar of Arizona that would require prosecutors to act on new evidence of a wrongful conviction. For the past two years, the Arizona Justice Project has petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court to change the State Bar of Arizona’s ethics rules, adding a provision based
Here is latest news article on the Milke case. It discusses the potential conflict of interest issues with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (MCAO) prosecuting her case after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed her conviction. The court’s ruling was based upon MCAO’s prior violation of their duty to disclose exculpatory evidence pursuant to Brady v. Maryland. Anna Edney | Bloomberg News as reported in the Arizona Republic An Arizona woman awaiting retrial on charges she had a part
Here is an update of the Massachusetts Crime Lab Scandal: • In June, 2011, allegations of misconduct at the William A. Hinton State Laboratory Institute in Jamaica Plain (Hinton drug lab) surfaced regarding work performed by Annie Dookhan, a chemist who had been employed in the forensic drug laboratory since November 2003. • Following an internal review, the Department of Public Health launched a formal investigation of the matter in December, 2011. The investigation concluded that “Dookhan failed to follow
Here are my seven favorite Brady decisions: 1. BRADY V. MARYLAND, 373 U.S.83 (1963) Both Brady and his co-defendant were found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. After trial, the prosecutor disclosed to Brady that the co-defendant admitted to the homicide. The court held that the prosecutor’s suppression of the confession violated the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. Accordingly, the prosecutor must disclose to the defendant all material evidence that is exculpatory. What is material? Anything
“Knock, knock.” “Who’s there?” says George Zimmerman. Answer – a guilty verdict. http://tinyurl.com/pzudpa7
This month the Arizona Court of Appeals rejected the argument that a judge does not have the discretion to hold a pretrial hearing on the reliability of scientific evidence. Since January 1, 2012 when Arizona adopted the Federal Daubert standard for safeguarding against junk science, several prosecutorial agencies have tried to persuade trial courts that things were “business as usual” despite the new rules of evidence. However, the February 5, 2013 ruling from Division One of the Arizona Court of
In my experience most prosecutors play by the rules. They know their ethical duties and abide by them. However, I, along with many of my colleagues, have observed a growing number of prosecutors that have no problem stepping over the ethics line. The issue seems more to do with ignorance than intent. For the most part, the public is unaware of this growing problem. It is only when the misconduct is so outrageous and the victim has the means to
On July 28, 2010 the federal district court issued an injunction to part of the highly publicized and talked about immigration bill in Arizona, known through-out the country as SB 1070. Practically speaking, this means that part of the bill is not enforceable until the appellate courts determine its constitutionality. Judge Susan Bolton had to read the bill piece by piece and line by line using the appropriate legal standards, statutes, and case law, to determine which provisions of the
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