Evidence

Motorcycle for-sale sign allowed search of suspect’s home, 8th Circuit rules

A man with a felony record wound up sentenced to a new 34-month prison term because he put a for-sale sign on a motorcycle at his Kansas City home. If the sign hadn’t been there, police would have needed a warrant to enter his yard, which was fenced and posted…

Jul 12, 2013 5:50 PM CDT

DNA links dead suspect to ‘Boston Strangler’ slaying; authorities plan to exhume his body

Nearly 50 years after a woman was killed in a homicide attributed to the so-called Boston Strangler, authorities say a “familial” DNA match has linked a suspect who confessed the crime to the 1964 slaying of Mary Sullivan. An exhumation of the body of the suspect, Albert H. DeSalvo, is…

Jul 11, 2013 5:40 PM CDT

Privilege protects in-house law firm communications about malpractice claim from client discovery

When a law firm faces a possible malpractice claim by a current client, confidential communications between the lawyers working for the client and designated in-house ethics counsel about how to handle the potential malpractice matter are privileged, providing certain rules have been followed, a top state court says. Attorney-client privilege…

Jul 11, 2013 12:30 PM CDT

Lawyer who urged client to clean up Facebook page has paid $544K legal bill; now faces ethics case

A Virginia lawyer who ran afoul of discovery requirements in a major wrongful-death trial by allegedly encouraging a client to clean up his Facebook account has paid his $544,000 share of a $722,000 legal fee award to opposing counsel and seen an $8.5 million award to his client and other…

Jul 11, 2013 11:10 AM CDT

Even if ex-NFL player Hernandez didn’t fire gun, prosecutors will deal with others, lawyer predicts

An “interesting choice of words” by a prosecutor during a Massachusetts court hearing last week suggests that authorities may believe someone other than Aaron Hernandez actually fired the five shots that killed Odin Lloyd. But whether or not the government thinks the former New England Patriots tight end was the…

Jul 3, 2013 5:52 PM CDT

How to tame ‘discovery genie’? Trial judges must consider cost-benefit, Colo. supremes say

Trial judges have to take an active role in managing discovery, the Colorado Supreme Court has ruled in a dispute over a request for millions of pages of paper and electronic documents. The court said in an opinion (PDF) last week that trial judges should consider cost-benefit as well as…

Jul 2, 2013 10:45 AM CDT

Lawyer for shot man suing ex-NFL player Aaron Hernandez: ‘You can’t make this stuff up’

When New York attorney David Jaroslawicz filed a federal civil suit June 13 against a New England Patriots football player, it might have seemed like an uphill battle to persuade authorities that Aaron Hernandez and two other men had left his client for dead, as Jaroslawicz says he now believes…

Jul 1, 2013 5:55 PM CDT

Report: Voicemail recording of woman being strangled will be in evidence at law grad’s murder trial

When law graduate Jason Bohn was arrested a year ago concerning the “especially cruel” slaying of his ex-girlfriend, the Queen’s district attorney cited, among other evidence, a call a police sergeant says the suspect made to her cellphone while she was in the station to report his conduct.. The sergeant…

Jul 1, 2013 4:16 PM CDT

Judge orders confiscation of traffic cameras

A Hamilton County (Cincinnati) judge slammed the tiny village of Elmwood Place and the company it uses to issue camera-caught speeding tickets, in effect saying they ran right through his judicial STOP sign. County Common Pleas Court Judge Robert Ruehlman had ruled back in March that using cameras to ticket…

Jun 28, 2013 8:00 PM CDT

Murder defendant’s airtight alibi contradicted DNA evidence

A California man seemingly was a solid suspect in the slaying of a millionaire at his Santa Clara County mansion when his DNA was found on the dead man’s fingernails. But prosecutors dismissed the murder case against Lukis Anderson, 26, this month after the homeless man was found to have…

Jun 28, 2013 11:30 AM CDT

Did sergeant in ‘bikini barista’ sting help drive-through coffee shops operate as strip clubs?

An investigation by Washington state and federal authorities into claims of lewd behavior and prostitution by “bikini baristas” at drive-through Snohomish County coffee shops such as Java Juggs and Twin Peaks during the past several years hadn’t been going well. Suspicious investigators wanted to know why customers routinely paid $20…

Jun 27, 2013 7:20 PM CDT

Lawyer decked at court hearing is still unable to work 6 weeks later; client charged in assault

Ordered to rest as he recuperates from being struck in the head during a May 13 court hearing, Ebensburg, Pa., attorney Tim Burns was not present Tuesday at a preliminary hearing on new charges now faced by death-row inmate Andre Staton over the incident. But Blair County District Attorney Richard…

Jun 26, 2013 5:39 PM CDT

Lawyer gave cash to bankruptcy trustee as thank-you, not bribe, defense says; federal jury acquits

No one disputed that a Florida personal injury attorney gave a bankruptcy trustee $3,000 cash in an envelope that was wrapped in a newspaper. But Vincent C. Rowley did so as a thank-you for a case referral that had nothing to do with bankruptcy, not in an attempt to bribe…

Jun 26, 2013 3:25 PM CDT

Lawyer fights $25K contempt fine, says it couldn’t be imposed on Sunday

An lawyer for a former Little Rock police officer charged with manslaughter in the death of a 15-year-old boy is facing a $25,000 contempt-of-court fine after an Arkansas judge said the lawyer didn’t follow his instruction limiting what could be said about the records of two juveniles with the teen…

Jun 25, 2013 9:45 PM CDT

Chemerinsky: Silence is not golden, Supreme Court says

A person may not invoke the right to remain silent by being silent and not responding to police questions. That seemingly oxymoronic statement was the holding in Salinas v. Texas, (PDF) which the U.S. Supreme Court issued June 17. The result is that unless a person explicitly invokes the right…

Jun 25, 2013 6:15 PM CDT