Articles Posted in Criminal Justice Issues

The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in Berghuis v. Thompkins. The Court will decide what the default rule ought to be where a suspect confirms that he understands his rights, but neither waives nor invokes them. In this case, Thompkins was read his Miranda rights and confirmed that he understood them, but then was…

Last month the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in U.S. v. Velez, a federal criminal case in which the lower court dismissed a money laundering charge based upon payments of legal fees. The Eleventh Circuit sits here in Atlanta, but also hears oral arguments in Montgomery, Alabama, and Jacksonville and Miami, Florida.…

In this article last week, The National Law Journal reported that the U.S. Sentencing Commission is holding a series of hearing in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of the Sentencing Reform Act to get feedback on federal sentencing issues. One of these hearings was held here in Atlanta, Georgia, this February. Testimony and written statements…

At the end of last month, the federal House of Representatives Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, which is a part of the Committee on the Judiciary, had a hearing on the over-criminalization of conduct and the over-federalization of criminal law. The importance of this issue cannot be overstated. NACDL president John Wesley Hall…

Although exile seems like an archaic form of punishment, it is still occasionally used in criminal cases under both Georgia and federal law. This week In Cha Britto, the madam of a massage parlor in Macon, Georgia, pleaded guilty to two counts of keeping a place of prostitution. She received a two-year suspended jail sentence,…

Time Magazine reported yesterday that a New York legislator, James Tedisco, introduced a bill in that state that, if passed, would require wealthy inmates to pay for the cost of their prison stays. A similar bill failed to pass in Georgia this year and the federal criminal justice system already takes the costs of incarceration…

Last week, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits here in Atlanta, Georgia, decided U.S. v. Valencia-Trujillo, a federal criminal case involving an extradition rule called the rule of specialty. The Court held that Mr. Valencia-Trujillo had not established that he had been extradited under Colombia’s treaty with the United States, rather than an…

In a potentially huge decision for criminal law in Georgia, Florida, and Alabama, the Eleventh Circuit federal appeals court in Atlanta held that twenty-one days was an unreasonably long time for law enforcement to wait before obtaining a search warrant after seizing a man’s computer hard drive. Because the circumstances of this case, United States…

Here in Atlanta, we have been involved in many criminal cases in which police arrested people for traffic offenses, then searched their vehicles and found evidence of completely unrelated crimes. The search incident to arrest rule has been unfairly used by police as an investigatory tool since New York v. Belton extended the rule in…

Last Monday, the United States Supreme Court issued its opinion in Corley v. United States. The issue in this case was whether a federal statute was intended to do away with the McNabb-Mallory exclusionary rule regarding criminal confessions or merely narrow it. In a 5 to 4 decision, the Court held that Congress meant to…