Last Thursday, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, District Judge Sean J. McLaughlin presiding, ruled that the government could not use evidence obtained from two search warrants against former Allegheny County Coroner, Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, as reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The warrants were issued for Dr. Wecht’s pathology laboratory in 2005. Agents seized […]
READ MOREMalamud Linked to PACER Pilot Shut Down
Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) is an archaic, document tracking system used by the federal courts. This is the database that stores all complaints, court motions, case scheduling and decisions. In 2001, the Judicial Conference of the US released a web-based version of the PACER database allowing remote access to most federal civil […]
READ MORECourts Face Growing Challenges Over Jurors’ Increasing Use of Internet, Computers, Cellphones, Etc.
In this age of universal access to information through computers, cellphones and other devices, there is one group the courts are increasingly opposed to having access—the jury. A March 18 article in the New York Times relates how jurors in a large criminal case in South Florida were discovered to have done research on the […]
READ MOREQueens Man Arrested for Firing a Realistic Toy Gun in Queens Park
A Queens man by the name of Jack Pawlowski was arrested on Wednesday, May 8, 2013 for firing a toy gun that resembled a real weapon and then handed it to his three year old son and other family members to play with. Apparently some people at Ditmar’s Park thought the gun was real. Maria Smilios […]
READ MOREInside Traders Beware: Sentencing Commission Pushing for Much Harsher Penalties
In the wake of recent Wall Street scandals and the growing perception of corruption within the financial industry, the federal government is taking dead aim at insider trading. Within the last few years, we have seen the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act and a series of highly publicized insider trading prosecutions, including the one resulting […]
READ MORELA Times on the SSDP Lawsuit
The LA Times ran a rather frustrating editorial this weekend on the ACLU and Students for Sensible Drug Policy’s lawsuit challenging the denial of federal financial aid to individuals with drug convictions. The last three graphs, in particular, left me scratching my head The ACLU is going down the wrong path with a lawsuit against […]
READ MOREFollow-up on 911 calls as “non-testimonial”
I spoke to Louis Turchirelli, who was the lawyer on Pitts v. State, which I wrote a post on recently. I asked him if he was going to take the case up on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. He advised me that there was a similar case pending already. I went to the Supreme Court […]
READ MORENE Georgia Men Accused Ricin Plot Convicted
We had previously cited the trial of Samuel Crump and Ray Adams in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in Gainesville on charges relating to a plot to attack government facilities and officials with the toxin ricin. As reported in the Gwinnett Daily Post and elsewhere, on Friday Crump and Adams were convicted […]
READ MOREWhy Winning at All Costs Compromises Justice
There’s an old “joke” among prosecutors that anyone can convict the guilty, but it takes a really exceptional prosecutor to convict the innocent. Not very funny, is it? The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Smith v. Cain, 132 S.Ct. 627 (2012), demonstrates that there are still criminal prosecutors out there who either don’t understand […]
READ MOREAgainst Coerced Sterilisation: A Resounding Victory in Namibia
Are autonomous feminist movements more important for tackling violence against women than the wealth of a country and the levels of female representation in government? Nell Osborne examines the transformative power of women’s movements. Gender based violence has been called the most pervasive and shameful of all human rights violations. And yet, it still remains […]
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