USA Today reported last week that nearly 2,000 convictions are being examined in Baltimore, Maryland, where the police improperly used high power cell phone tracking devices to investigate crimes. Defense lawyers plan to seek to have hundreds of convictions thrown out. According to the article, cellphone trackers known as “stingrays” have been used by police […]
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Kodak Moments With Police: Let the Videographer Beware
Most will remember the popular, now infamous, news story from a few years back when a young woman was punched in the face by a police lieutenant at the Philadelphia Puerto Rican Day Parade. That incident was captured on video and audio by a local bystander and quickly went viral. The past few years have […]
PA SUPERIOR COURT: Hearsay Enough for Prima Facie Case?
A three-member panel of the Pennsylvania Superior Court has upended the required evidence for proving a prima facie case at a preliminary hearing, holding in Commonwealth v. Ricker, 2015 WL 43810955, that a prima facie case at this stage in a criminal proceeding can be established solely based on hearsay. Hearsay is an out-of-court statement […]
President Obama in Philly: “Criminal Injustice”
In a keynote address to the NAACP National Convention meeting yesterday in Philadelphia, President Obama strongly argued that mandatory criminal sentences for nonviolent drug offenders should be reduced or abolished all together, and that generally the system passing as “criminal justice” in the United States does not live up to that billing. During the speech, […]
SCOTUS: Ohio v. Clark Majority Further Discerns Scope of Confrontation Clause
In Ohio v. Clark, a 6-member majority of the United States Supreme Court agreed that introduction of incriminating statements made to a school teacher by a three-year-old boy indicating that a specific person was responsible for abusing him was admissible and not a violation of the Confrontation Clause. Three other members concurred in the judgment, […]
