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Russell A. Spatz
On December 1, 2015 the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee took a hard look at Florida's direct-file laws and their effects on the lives of juvenile offenders. In the last five years, 12,000 juvenile offenders have ended up in Florida's adult criminal justice system...
Michael Ray Hanline holds a record no one wants to break. The 69-year old man has served the longest sentence of any wrongly convicted citizen in California.Finally FreeReleased and exonerated last year, Hanline has filed a lawsuit against Ventura County for...
The Supreme Court is hearing a case on a defendant's rights to seized assets that may set new precedent on the subject. The case centers on Sila Luis, a Miami woman who was indicted in 2012 for Medicare fraud. The allegations against Luis claim that she and two...
Ineffective assistance of counsel is a legal statute that gives persons convicted of a crime a chance to have their case reviewed. It is based on evidence that the defense attorney did a poor job of representation, which resulted in the conviction and/or sentencing....
Ineffective assistance of counsel is a legal statute that gives persons convicted of a crime a chance to have their case reviewed. It is based on evidence that the defense attorney did a poor job of representation, which resulted in the conviction and/or sentencing....
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently made a ruling on the use of drug sniffing dogs in U.S. vs. Bentley. Trained dogs have very sensitive noses and are able to identify drugs, but the problem in police forces is that dogs are also hard-wired to...
Former Goldman Sachs programmer Sergey Aleynikov has just received a second overturned conviction, this time at the state level, in New York. It comes three years after he had a federal conviction reversed.Aleynikov was originally charged and found guilty of corporate...
The reality TV show The First 48 and the City of Miami got its own dose of reality earlier this month when a federal jury awarded $850,000 to 27-year-old Taiwan Smart for a wrongful arrest that was made as a part of the show.Smart spent 19 months in jail before...
A recent series in the Washington Post analyzed some of the questions surrounding the subjective field of bite mark analysis in criminal court proceedings. The articles addressed the field itself, particularly the American Board of Forensic Odontology (ABFO) and its...
In a surprising twist on what starts out like a classic American dream story, Joseph Rivers just became the most recent casualty in a practice known as civil asset forfeiture, which allows law enforcement officials to take money and property from citizens, even if...