Archive for the 'Criminal Law News' Category

A U.S. District Court judge ruled that mandatory DNA collection for all felony suspects is constitutional, dealing a major blow to civil rights advocates and criminal defense attorneys.

Judge Gregory J. Hallows on Thursday upheld the 2006 DNA Fingerprint Act, a federal law that allows law enforcement officers to collect DNA from anyone “arrested, facing charges, or convicted” of felony crimes.

The case before Judge Hallows involved a California man arrested on child pornography charges who refused to submit to a DNA swab test, arguing that it violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure.

Civil rights advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, argue that allowing police to collect DNA from anyone arrest, not just convicted, of a felony crime opens a door for abuse.

“We think this ruling is incorrect. It ignores the presumption of innocence and it does not pay enough attention to the protections of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” said Michael Risher, staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California.

Most states’ statutes only allow for DNA collection after a conviction. The new ruling could greatly increase not only the number of individuals with DNA in the federal database, but the practice of false arrests to collect DNA, Risher argued.

Police could, for example, arrest a suspect of a crime on an unrelated charge in order to collect DNA that could be used to incriminate him in the original crime.

The town of Hardin, Mont., wants to fill its new $27 million prison and provide jobs for its 3,400 residents. Its proposed solution: take on the prisoners from Guantanamo Bay.

President Obama announced the closing of the controversial detention center as one of his first presidential acts. This has raised questions as to where the prisoners there will go.

The Hardin city council voted 5-0 last month in support of a proposal to brings the prisoners to the Two Rivers Regional Correctional Facility, according to CNN.

The state of the art prison was opened in 2007, but has yet to hold a single prisoner. Employees hired to work there have since been laid off.

Despite the town’s enthusiasm, their congressional representatives are less optimistic.

“Housing potential terrorists in Montana is not good for our state,” Max Baucus, the state’s senior Democratic senator, wrote. “These people stop at nothing. Their primary goal in life, and death, is to destroy America.”

Two Rivers is a 464-bed facility. There are currently approximately 245 detainees at Gauntanamo, many of whom have not officially been given criminal charges.

Five Alabama police officers who brutally kicked and beat an unconscious suspect have been fired, according to a CNN report.

The indecent occurred after a high-speed chase through Birmingham in January of last year, and was filmed by the dashboard camera of one of the police cars.

In the video, police chase the suspects van for over 50 miles, which reached speeds of up to 100 mph before knocking down an officer standing in the roadway, careening up an on-ramp and finally flipping over.

The suspect, Anthony Warren, was ejected from the vehicle and was not moving when the Birmingham police approached him kicked and beat him with their batons for 11 seconds, according to CNN.

In his mugshot, taken five days later, Warren is badly bruised and wearing a neck brace.

The video was discovered by Police Chief A.C. Roper in March of this year as the district attorney’s office was preparing their case against Warren.

Warren was facing attempted murder charges, but his criminal defense team plea bargained for an aggravated assault charge. Warren is currently serving 20 years in prison.

Police is Salt Lake City have a new tactic to track gang crime that will likely show a boost in gang activity in the city.

The new policy broadens the scope of what qualifies as gang-related crime, and is the result of a three-year study on the issue, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

“We’re not looking at it as overstating gang problems,” said Lt. Isaac Atencio. “We look at it as getting a clearer picture of gang problems.”

The new definition no longer looks at motive when tracking criminal gang activity.

In the city’s old definition, gang crime had to show a clear motivation for the gang’s interests, such as murder of a rival gang member or robbery to finance the gang.

The new definition includes any crime in which either the perpetrator or the victim is a gang member.

So what is a gang member? The city has established a set of criteria to identify a gang member for crime tracking purposes. Any two of the following will qualify either party:

• Self proclamation of gang membership
• Photographs displaying gang involvement (such as gang writings/graffiti on notebooks, books, walls, personal items, etc.)
• Gang-style tattoos
• Gang-style attire
• Gang signs or posturing
• Arrested (or known contact) with other known gang members
• Information from a reliable source

These loose guidelines (particularly the gang-style qualifiers) could lead to some false-positives for gang crime.

The district prosecutors will likely be imposing harsher sentences for gang-related crime, and a Utah criminal attorney will likely point out the flaws in the criteria.

Salt Lake City is not the first to broaden their definitions of gang crime.  Los Angeles uses the same set of criteria to track gang crimes in their city.

Say goodbye to the War on Drugs.

Gil Kerlikowske, the Obama Administration’s new Drug Czar, told the Wall Street Journal in his first interview last week that the moniker, and the crime-and-punishment mentality behind it, is being dropped.

The kinder, gentler approach will help break down the barrier the surrounds the criminal drug culture, Kerlikowske says.

“Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them,” he said. “We’re not at war with people in this country.”

In its place will be a public health approach to the drug problem in America.

Among the initiatives being planned by the White House are an end to federal raids on medical marijuana clinics, federal funding for needle-exchange programs, and more balanced sentencing for possession of powder and crack cocaine.

Additionally, the administration may push for more drug treatment and counseling in criminal cases, according to the Journal article.

Many critics see the current drug policy as responsible for the over-crowding of prisons.

The term “War on Drugs” was first used by the Nixon administration in 1969.

Want to help solve a crime in Detroit? Don’t call 911.  Just update your Facebook status.

Beginning today, the Detroit Police Department is rolling out a three-phase communication plan that will draw upon e-mail, cell phone and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace in hopes of getting out pertinent information and getting in tips, according to the Detroit Free Press.

“One little smidge of information is all we need to get on the right track,” Deputy Chief James Tolbert said. “We will end up arresting a lot of people using this.”

Phase one of the plan is the launch of Network Alert, which will allow citizens to sign up for APB-type alerts, such as descriptions of missing or wanted people, via e-mail and text message.

Phase two will be the launch of a tip line which will allow citizens to send anonymous crime tips via voice or text. The line will be encrypted to ensure anonymity, and not even police will have access to the tipster’s info.

Phase three, coming within the next month, will be the social networking profiles.

The department will be one of the first in the country to use the reach of social networking for tip-gathering.

Police are trying to counter the “don’t snitch” mentality that is prominent in the city’s high-crime areas, and foster a culture of trust without fear of retribution from criminals.

The program, which has a two year cost of about $70,000, is funded by drug forfeiture funds from Detroit, the FBI, the U.S. Marshals and other agencies that work with the city on task forces, according to the Free Press report.

The Network Alert system, which should begin sending alerts as soon as this week, will allow citizens to specify which district or precinct they’d like to hear from. The project is coordinated by CitizenObserver, which already works with agencies throughout Michigan.

Ponzi-scheme perpetrator Bernie Madoff dominated the headlines this week. Madoff plead guilty this week, not amounting much in the way of a criminal defense, to 11 counts of fraud, money laundering, perjury and theft. In all, his “clients” - which included athletes, actors and celebrities - lost $65 billion.

The clients thought they were making legitimate investments. But Madoff had his own ideas. Unfortunately, because of his quick guilty pleas, the true details of what exactly he did with all that money may not be known. He says his family wasn’t involved, but his wife is trying to keep $65 million she says is her own money.

Regardless, he’s headed to prison - a small cell with a toilet, bunk bed and not much else - probably for the rest of his life. But what people really want - answers, their money back - may be gone for good.

From the Newspaper.com, comes a story about a county attorney in Arizona throwing out the criminal prosecution cases against scores of Arizona drivers that were brought by a speed dection machine that took photos of speeding cars.

The photos were the only evidence offered in cases that included charges of reckless driving and criminal speeding. If convicted, the criminal charges could have resulted in license supsension, fines and even jail time. Said Maripoca County Attorney Andrew Thomas: “You have to have a witness.”

This story is a great reminder of why the constitution protects criminal rights. If you are facing criminal charges - whether for reckless driving, tax evasion or even violent crime - you still have rights, and those include consulting a criminal defense attorney. Using your rights will ensure that a machine doesn’t put you behind bars.

Economy down, crime up? That could be the case, according to a new study published by the National White-Collar Crime Center that takes a look at 16 years worth of data.

As reported in the Birmingham Business Journal, fraud and embezzlement increased during and in the period just after the country’s last two recessions. From the piece:

In 2001, arrests for those crimes increased 35 percent. After a major recession between 1990-1991, arrests for fraud and embezzlement rose 47.5 percent.

America isn’t the only country at risk. In the United Kingdom and South Africa, authorities are gearing up to for an increase in white-collar crime. And Switzerland reported more than $860 million was taken last year in corporate criminal scams.

All of this comes in the wake of the release of the full list of victims of the Bernard Madoff ponzi scheme. Madoff’s investment scheme may have taken $50 billion from its victims, which include movie stars, professional atheletes and politicians.

Learn more about white-collar crime.

Showbiz Promotions planned to create a doll to honor the deaths of young children by launching the “Caylee Sunshine” doll.  Jaime Salcedo, the president of the company, told CNN that the money from the doll would be donated to charity.

However, the new toy has yet to make it to shelves after public outrage that included family members of Caylee Anthony, the slain toddler whose story has been in the headlines for a while. The doll was set to go on sale on Tuesday, Jan. 22 and retail for $29.99. Unlike the toddler, the doll has blond hair. She is dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that reads “Caylee Sunsine.” The doll plays the song “You are my Sunsine.”

“While we still feel it is important to raise awareness and raise money to help stop this type of crime from being committed, we feel we can be more effective using traditional methods,” said a statement on the Web site and signed by Salcedo.