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Criminal Law

Tennessee Criminal Lawyer Blog

Covers DUI, Narcotics and Drugs, White Collar Offenses and other Criminal Defense law issues with a focus on Tennessee State law.
By Baker Associates

Post Frequency: 5.4/day

Last Entry: March 31, 2011 at 00:14:19

Girl Charged with Manslaughter After Running Over Woman Mowing Lawn

Posted on April 23, 2010
Some incidents resonate in both the personal injury and criminal law contexts, which enables both our injury blog and our criminal law blog to examine the issue from both sides of the spectrum. The situation that will be discussed here and on www.tennesseeinjurylawyerblog...

Driver Avoids Jail After Driving Down Freeway with Leg Out Window

Posted on April 23, 2010
Sometimes, as a driver, it is difficult to tell when you are driving in violation of the law. For example, it?s difficult to judge at times when you should use your turn signal, when you should turn your headlights on, how fast you should drive, etc...

Woman Awaits Sentencing for Starving Son to Death

Posted on April 21, 2010
The right to choose and participate in a religion is a right that many Americans hold near and dear to their hearts. For the most part, many Americans participate in their religion of choice as frequently and passionately as they want without risking any sort of criminal or other type of penalty for doing so...

Joint Representation in Criminal Cases

Posted on April 20, 2010
Any time charges are brought against two or more individuals in connection with the same alleged criminal activity, possible joint representation may be an issue. Joint representation poses certain risks for both the lawyer and the client(s) that differ depending on the circumstances...

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Community Corrections Sentences Are Revocable Privileges

Posted on April 19, 2010
?Community corrections? is a general term that basically encompasses most forms of criminal punishment that do not involve incarceration. For many defendants, a community corrections sentence is a godsend, allowing them to avoid incarceration and instead serve out their sentences by doing some sort of pretrial diversion, halfway house, rehabilitation program, or some other form of non-incarcerated activity...

Appealing a Sentence

Posted on April 16, 2010
Not surprisingly, defendants who are sentenced to jail time for offenses for which they have been found guilty frequently feel that the sentence was too harsh. While it often turns out that the sentence was reached fairly, there are also times where the sentence was indeed too harsh or was not arrived at properly at the trial court level, warranting a vacation of the sentence by the court of appeals...

Fish Story Lands Man in Jail

Posted on April 15, 2010
Everyone knows someone who has lied, or still lies frequently, about the size and number of the fish they have caught. For whatever reason, exaggerating about the size of ?the big one? that a fisherman has landed is as old as fishing itself. Most of the time everyone just assumes a fish was probably a few pounds lighter and a few inches shorter than the angler is claiming and moves on, no harm done...

Search Warrants: Computers

Posted on April 14, 2010
Search warrants often play critical roles in many criminal cases, primarily because they are usually necessary in order to allow law enforcement officials to invade someone?s privacy in order to search for evidence. There are many principles that govern the legitimacy and use of search warrants, many of which have been discussed in previous blog articles...

Orders of Protection: Duration

Posted on April 13, 2010
As discussed in previous blog articles on this site, orders of protection can be very burdensome on respondents, even to the point of giving rise to criminal contempt sanctions. Thus, a respondent who is subject to an order of protection will rightfully have a host of questions about the order...

Child Neglect in Tennessee

Posted on April 13, 2010
Child neglect and child abuse cases arise frequently in the criminal law context. There may be many reasons for this, one of which is certainly the fact that supervising a child is a full-time job and that it is difficult to devote your attention to another person twenty-four hours per day...

Orders of Protection: What is Stalking?

Posted on April 09, 2010
As discussed in our previous blog, one of the prohibitions that can be placed in an Order of Protection is that the respondent (the person against whom the Order is issued) is forbidden from stalking the petitioner (the victim, or person who sought the Order)...

Orders of Protection: What Do They Do?

Posted on April 08, 2010
If you or anyone you know has been the respondent to an order of protection, you are probably at least generally familiar with the basic workings of such an order. If you have never been a respondent to an order of protection or have little familiarity with the topic, what an order of protection may specifically prohibit can be found in the Tennessee Code...

Orders of Protection: Who Can Get One Against You

Posted on April 07, 2010
Domestic violence is the root of a great deal of the criminal charges that pop up in Tennessee courts every day. It is no secret that familiarity often breeds tension and that people who spend a significant amount of time together and deal with many of life?s most serious problems together sometimes get in disputes that are taken too far...

Criminal Conspiracy

Posted on April 06, 2010
Certain types of criminal conduct, like running large-scale drug rings and knocking off mega-casinos Ocean?s Eleven-style, involve the cooperation of multiple individuals in order to be accomplished successfully. Tennessee recognizes that such offenses often require the cooperation of many actors and that some of those actors will never actually engage in the conduct, such as theft, that is sought to be punished by the statute...

Five New Jersey Men Arrested in Rape of Seven Year-Old

Posted on April 05, 2010
Five New Jersey men have been arrested in connection with the rape of a seven year-old, a situation that was discussed previously on our blog article for April 1, 2010. The men, whose ages are twenty, nineteen, seventeen, thirteen, and fourteen, are reportedly five of the seven men who participated in the rape of the little girl; the other two either have not been identified yet or the authorities are keeping quiet as to their identities...

Police Arrest Nude Woman in Elevator

Posted on April 02, 2010
Elevator rides are often uncomfortable experiences. For instance, you may find yourself sharing an elevator with someone who smells particularly bad, someone who makes an awkward attempt at conversation, or even a whole group of people who are sandwiched in like sardines...

New Jersey Teen Sells Seven Year-Old Stepsister for Sex

Posted on April 01, 2010
In what may be one of the most shocking stories you will ever read, a fifteen year-old New jersey girl is charged with aggravated sexual assault, promoting prostitution, and other crimes after she allowed her seven year-old stepsister to be raped by as many as seven men in exchange for money...

Woman Checks ?Rob a Bank? Off Bucket List

Posted on March 31, 2010
A fifty-one year old Florida woman reached another one of life?s little milestones last week when she successfully robbed a bank in Sanford Florida. The woman reportedly decided to rob the bank because it was on her ?bucket list,? which has become a popular term for a list of accomplishments or activities a person wants to see completed before he or she passes away...

When to Invoke the Right to an Attorney

Posted on March 30, 2010
Most people are familiar with the constitutional guarantee of the right to counsel, but the question of when to invoke it can be a confusing one. As a practical matter, the right to an attorney can be invoked at any time after the suspect has been placed under arrest and read his or her Miranda rights...

Boy Stabs Mom to Stop Her from Driving Drunk

Posted on March 29, 2010
In what can only be described as one of the odder mother-son interactions you will ever see, a fourteen year-old Toronto boy was arrested last Saturday after he threw a knife at his mother in an effort to stop her from driving drunk. Reportedly, the woman had been drinking and was attempting to get in the car and drive against the wishes of her son...

Can I Represent Myself?: Ineffective Assistance of Counsel

Posted on March 26, 2010
As the past couple of articles on this blog have noted, criminal defendants have the right to represent themselves at trial thanks to the United States Supreme Court holding in Faretta v. California. However, as has also been noted, this can be a risky proposition...

Can I Represent Myself?: Rules of Evidence

Posted on March 25, 2010
Yesterday?s blog discussed the United States Supreme Court holding in Faretta v. California that a defendant in a criminal trial has a constitutional right to self-representation. Yesterday?s blog also noted that it is very often a bad idea for defendants to forego either hiring an East Tennessee criminal defense attorney or accepting the assistance of a public defender in favor of representing themselves...

Can I Represent Myself?

Posted on March 24, 2010
The United States Constitution guarantees a plethora of rights to the accused in criminal trials including rights that have previously been discussed in this blog including the right to remain silent, the right to an attorney, and the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures...

Exercising the Right to Remain to Silent Can be Crucial

Posted on March 23, 2010
The right to remain silent is one of the most notable, useful, and important rights guaranteed to United States citizens via the Constitution. If you have ever watched even five minutes of any show featuring law enforcement, you have more than likely heard this right alluded to in a Miranda warning...

What is a Criminal History?

Posted on March 22, 2010
A defendant?s criminal history is extremely relevant once a conviction or guilty plea has been obtained and the trial proceeds to the sentencing phase. The defendant?s criminal history will play a significant role in sentencing and may factor into the length of the sentence, the type of sentence, and whether the sentences will run consecutively or concurrently...

Mootness

Posted on March 19, 2010
Mootness is an issue that is not encountered all too often in criminal law, but it can have important consequences when it surfaces. When an issue is moot, it basically means that circumstances surrounding or pertaining to the issue are such that there is no reason to take further legal proceedings with regard to the issue or that the issue is beyond the scope of court proceedings...

Appealing A Guilty Plea

Posted on March 18, 2010
For various reasons, a guilty plea is not an agreement to be entered into lightly and the considerations that the defendant must take into account extend beyond merely what punishment or lack thereof is being offered by the state. For example, entering a guilty plea may also impose additional burdens on a defendant (depending on the terms of the agreement) including the loss of the right to appeal the case...

Simple Possession: "Valid Prescription" Exception

Posted on March 17, 2010
The way that Tennessee?s simple possession statute is written provides that it is an offense for a person to possess a controlled substance ?[u]nless the substance was obtained directly from, or pursuant to, a valid prescription or order of a practitioner while acting in the course of professional practice...

Man Kills Burglar with Samurai Sword

Posted on March 16, 2010
A would-be burglar got more than he bargained for last September when he broke into a home shared by several Johns Hopkins University Students. Apparently the students had heard him come into the house and four of them confronted him in the garage, one of whom was somehow armed with a samurai sword...

Scope of Automobile Searches: Containers

Posted on March 15, 2010
In previous articles, this blog has discussed the vehicle exception to the requirement that law enforcement officials must obtain a search warrant in order to search a person?s property for evidence of a crime. Simply put, law enforcement officials may search a vehicle without a warrant where they have probable cause to believe that evidence of criminal activity will be found inside the vehicle and where exigent circumstances exist that necessitate searching the vehicle immediately...

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