Criminal Procedure

Phone Transcripts Released in Jeffs Case

Formerly sealed documents detailing jailhouse phone calls made by the leader of a controversial fringe sect of the Mormon church that advocates polygamy were released Tuesday by a Utah court. A lawyer for Warren Jeffs, 51, who has since been convicted of accomplice rape for pressuring a 14-year-old church member…

Nov 1, 2007 7:33 PM CDT

Supreme Court Debate Over Retroactivity Leaves Lawyers Silent

Justices debated how far states can go in making U.S. Supreme Court decisions retroactive during oral arguments yesterday (PDF) in the case of a man challenging his conviction because out-of-court statements were used to convict him. The petitioner wants the court’s 2004 confrontation clause ruling in Crawford v. Washington to…

Nov 1, 2007 2:04 PM CDT

Jezebel on a Broomstick & Salem Witch Judge

When Eve LaPlante, a Boston area writer, starts thinking about a possible book topic, she doesn’t have to go far from home. In the last several years she has written two books about family forbears, American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans and…

Oct 29, 2007 11:02 PM CDT

ABA Calls for National Execution Moratorium

After a three-year study on state capital punishment systems, the American Bar Association is calling for a nationwide moratorium on executions until an unfair and sometimes inaccurate application of the death penalty is corrected. “The death penalty system is rife with irregularity—supporting the need for a moratorium until states can…

Oct 29, 2007 9:51 AM CDT

Legal Loophole in Deer Custody Case

Snowball is headed back home—for now. Because of a legal loophole, the disabled deer raised by a Molalla, Ore., family after they found her as a fawn along a road five years ago has been saved, as the family sees it, from being sent by the state to an elk…

Oct 27, 2007 12:01 AM CDT

Abortion Doc Tries To Block Grand Jury

In an unusual case emerging out of Kansas, a late-term abortion provider has petitioned the state supreme court to block a grand jury investigation into his clinic practices. Anti-abortion groups took the rare step of petitioning for Sedgwick County to convene a grand jury to probe the Wichita clinic run…

Oct 24, 2007 8:50 PM CDT

Cop’s DUI Cases Tossed After Prosecutor Ride-Along

A Chicago police officer, celebrated for writing the most DUI tickets in Illinois, is seeing his record blemished. Some 50 of his DUI cases have been dropped because improper procedures were followed, the Daily Southtown reports. The paper reports that John Haleas, who has been honored three of the past…

Oct 24, 2007 7:24 PM CDT

Exonerated But Still Struggling

Twenty years after he was convicted of rape based on an inaccurate witness identification, Marcus Lyons has finally been cleared by DNA evidence. His conviction has been dismissed by the DuPage County state’s attorney, and his name will soon be expunged from a database of convicted sex offenders, reports the…

Oct 22, 2007 3:52 PM CDT

High Court to Hear Confrontation Case of Convicted Lawyer

This month the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the case of a disbarred lawyer convicted of child sexual abuse who claims he never got to confront his 6-year-old accuser in court. The boy testified against Stephen Danforth via videotape, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. The Minnesota Supreme Court had…

Oct 22, 2007 2:00 PM CDT

Speedster Crosses US at 90 mph, No Tickets

Even though Alexander Roy has published a book about his illegal speeding, authorities apparently can’t throw the book at him. The 35-year-old outlaw racer describes in detail the 2,794-mile trip he claims to have made from New York to Los Angeles last year in 31 hours at an average speed…

Oct 17, 2007 11:57 PM CDT

Law Firm to Clients: Feds Tapped Our Phones

Lawyers at a Vermont firm that represents clients being held in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan believe the federal government may be wiretapping their law office phones. So Gensburg, Atwell & Broderick sent a letter to other clients of the firm on Oct. 2, warning…

Oct 11, 2007 6:48 PM CDT

ACLU: Feds’ Drugging of Immigrants Torture?

In a motion filed yesterday in an asylum case, the American Civil Liberties Union calls for a halt to an admitted federal policy of forcibly injecting some immigrants with psychotropic medication and putting them aboard commercial airlines for deportation. It says the practice violates federal law and the Bill of…

Oct 10, 2007 4:10 PM CDT

Brain Secrets Study Could Change Courts

A $10 million multidisciplinary brain secrets study launched today could eventually bring big changes to the nation’s courtrooms. With the help of 25 participating universities, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is bringing “lawyers, judges, philosophers, legal scholars and scientists together to address how to use in the…

Oct 9, 2007 4:18 PM CDT

14 Years, No Trial: Retarded Man Freed

Relatives expressed relief today after a judge ruled that a retarded North Carolina man who was never tried, yet had been held 14 years in a state mental institution concerning a crime it is doubtful he committed, would be freed. However it still isn’t clear exactly when Floyd Lee Brown,…

Oct 8, 2007 11:34 PM CDT

Attys Ask for One More Year of Trial Prep

Attorneys representing triple murderer Joseph Duncan in Idaho have asked for a one-year delay to prepare for his federal death penalty trial. The case already has been moved from July to January. But attorneys for Duncan say they need much more time because a lead attorney stepped down and investigators…

Oct 5, 2007 11:50 AM CDT