Criminal Law

If you're arrested for drugs, you're more likely to get a second chance if you're white

Posted on October 21, 2008
Anthony Smith Jr. is black, poor and a native of Cleveland's East Side. So is Dontez Orr. Both are in their early 20s. Each had a life-altering encounter with police two summers ago that grew from trivial events. Smith was...

FBI: Justifiable homicides at highest in more than a decade

Posted on October 20, 2008
The number of justifiable homicides committed by police and private citizens has been rising in the past two years to their highest levels in more than a decade, reflecting a shoot-first philosophy in dealing with crime, say law enforcement analysts....

Experts: Fla. conviction possible without toddler's body

Posted on October 20, 2008
Prosecutors have DNA tests and hair samples. They have testimony about "the smell of death" in the trunk of the suspect's car. What they do not have is a body. Prosecutors building a case against a single 22-year-old Florida mother...

Police camera maker is profitable for politicians

Posted on October 20, 2008
WatchGuard Video, which provides patrol car cameras to state and local police forces across the nation, points with pride to the lawmakers who helped the company grow from a tiny technology startup into a government contracting powerhouse. And at least...

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Alafair S. Burke Professor of Law Hofstra University School of Law

Posted on October 19, 2008
Professor Burke teaches criminal law and criminal procedure subjects. Her research intersects criminal law and procedure and focuses on policing and prosecutorial policies. She has written about prosecutorial decision making, community policing and non-punitive responses to crime problems, and the...

LAPD blames faulty fingerprint analysis for erroneous accusations

Posted on October 18, 2008
The Los Angeles Police Department has acknowledged in a confidential report that people have been falsely implicated in crimes because the department's fingerprint experts wrongly identified them as suspects. The 10-page internal report, obtained by The Times, highlighted two cases...

ACLU: Federal death row inmates denied health care

Posted on October 17, 2008
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) ? Death row inmates at the federal prison in Terre Haute are routinely denied access to medical, dental and mental health care, the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday in a letter to a governmental official....

First filings made for Ill. innocence petitions

Posted on October 17, 2008
CHICAGO - Lawyers at Northwestern University on Wednesday filed four petitions on behalf of exonerated former Illinois inmates, the first under a new law that would allow them to seek compensation from the state. Under the law passed in September...

In many US airports, guns are OK outside security

Posted on October 17, 2008
ATLANTA ? Flying in the U.S. has been transformed since Sept. 11, with passengers forced to remove their shoes, take out their laptop computers and put liquids and gels in clear plastic bags. Yet it's perfectly legal to take a...

Why Abolition of the Death Penalty was Important

Posted on October 16, 2008
I wrote the introduction to today's topic, "Why abolishing the Death Penalty in New Jersey was Important" weeks ago, before the market crash and fear of a depression engulfed our country. It's understandable that everyone is focused on keeping their....

False Confession: Devine on his 12 Years in Office

Posted on October 16, 2008
Outgoing Cook County State's Attorney Dick Devine says he knows innocent people sometimes confess to crimes they didn't commit. He says it's one of the things he's learned in his time as the county's top prosecutor.

Ill. law school poised to help wrongly convicted on a shorter path to pardon, compensation

Posted on October 16, 2008
Marlon Pendleton was released from an Illinois prison in 2006 after DNA evidence exonerated him in the sexual assault for which he was convicted in 1993. But nearly two years out of prison, Pendleton hasn't been pardoned for the crime,...

Drug Courts Offer Many Another Chance

Posted on October 15, 2008
It was not your usual courtroom scene. For one thing, the judge choked up as he described one woman?s struggle with opiate addiction after her arrest for forging prescriptions. Over the last three years, she had repeatedly missed court-ordered therapy...

Killer Cooey is executed

Posted on October 15, 2008
LUCASVILLE, Ohio -- Richard Wade Cooey III was executed this morning, forever silencing his personal argument that lethal injection is a cruel and flawed process that can cause an agonizing death. Cooey, 41, was pronounced dead at 10:28 a.m., only...

Macomb tests jury reform

Posted on October 15, 2008
The Michigan Supreme Court is debating whether to change how juries operate during trials -- and some Macomb County residents will be among the first to test the proposed rules. For the next 14 months, jurors in Circuit Judge David...

Eyewitnesses still play key roles in cases where DNA, other evidence is lacking

Posted on October 15, 2008
The fallibility of eyewitness testimony revealed by DNA exonerations in Dallas County and nationwide is not a relic of the past. Police and prosecutors still depend on the same discredited identification procedures to ensure convictions today. Police use these techniques...

Seattle police unit reaches out to the mentally ill

Posted on October 14, 2008
The former social worker on Ravenna Avenue Northeast used to help the vulnerable. Now, she's the one who needs help. When she's delusional, the 66-year-old can be violent toward neighbors. In two years, her neighbors have called police a dozen...

Attacks by Teen Groups Rising in D.C. and Nation

Posted on October 14, 2008
D.C. police say they are seeing a growing number of teenagers and young adults traveling in groups to assault and rob unsuspecting citizens, a trend that mirrors crimes in cities across the country. In an eight-hour period last week, five...

20 Top Crime Stories

Posted on October 14, 2008
We?ve seen some amazing crime stories on News Gems lately. These Top Twenty from the past six months range from the jungles of Africa to a small town in Tennessee. Some are groundbreaking exposés while others tell stories from the...

Intuitions of Justice: Implications for Criminal Law and Justice Policy

Posted on October 13, 2008
Recent social science research suggests that many if not most judgments about criminal liability and punishment for serious wrongdoing are intuitional rather than reasoned. Further, such intuitions of justice are nuanced and widely shared, even though they concern matters that...

Technology to track criminals will expand

Posted on October 13, 2008
As the economy tightens the reins on the rest of us, San Bernardino County is shortening its leash even more on a special few. This is a group almost everyone is glad that someone is watching. It includes child molesters,...

Assessing Capital Punishment Trends In The U.S.

Posted on October 13, 2008
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal for a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal and said it needed more time to consider the fate of Troy Anthony Davis. Davis was granted a stay of execution just hours before...

Three Part Investigation into the 19 Wrongful Convictions in Dallas County

Posted on October 13, 2008
From dallasnews.com: For nearly a century, police and prosecutors have been on notice that relying on eyewitness testimony is risky. But that hasn't stopped them from using it to prosecute cases - sometimes sending the innocent to prison. The Dallas....

Supreme Court Rejects Obesity Appeal

Posted on October 13, 2008
The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from an Ohio prisoner who argued he is too obese to be executed. Richard Cooey is scheduled to be put to death Tuesday. The court denied his request for a stay without...

Unprecedented Number of Federal Judges under Investigation?

Posted on October 13, 2008
U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent is the first federal judge to be indicted for alleged federal sex crimes, but he's only the latest in a string of jurists to face misconduct allegations in 2008, for behavior such as frequenting a...

Barry Friedman New York University School of Law

Posted on October 12, 2008
Research Constitutional Theory Federal Jurisdiction Federalism Fourth Amendment Judicial Behavior Judicial Review Education J.D., Georgetown University Law Center, 1982 B.A., University of Chicago, 1978 Appointments Vice Dean, 2007 Jacob D. Fuchsberg Professor of Law, 2003 Professor of Law, 2000 Visiting...

Sentences on Trial

Posted on October 11, 2008
YOGI BERRA could have written a recently released report on the failure of mandatory minimum sentences. The report, published by Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), chronicles lawmakers' rush in the 1950s to enact tough mandatory minimum sentences for what they...

Anti-gang squad shows an impact; 300 arrests, 25 guns taken

Posted on October 10, 2008
Six months after a Gang Impact Squad was formed to combat violence in Cleveland, the unit has arrested scores of violent criminals. The seven-officer squad has confiscated 25 guns and arrested more than 300 people for drugs, guns and violent...

Criminal Prosecutions Predicted to Surge Over Financial Crisis

Posted on October 10, 2008
With public anger reaching a boiling point over plunging stock prices and Wall Street "greed," white-collar defense attorneys are preparing for an inevitable surge in criminal prosecutions. Stanley S. Arkin, for one, said he expects that the anger, hysteria and...

Task force recommends changes to state's involuntary commitment laws

Posted on October 10, 2008
A mental health system facing a critical shortage of hospital beds, riddled with breakdowns in communication and hamstrung by the state's commitment laws helped create the conditions that led to the killing of Sierra Club worker Shannon Harps outside her...

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