News

Louisiana man is kept in prison 41 days after his release date, part of a plague of "inexplicable and illegal over-detention in Louisiana prisons." Can he sue the head of state corrections? Fifth Circuit: Yup, sure can.…

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled Thursday that anyone under the age of 21 cannot be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, finding such a sentence constitutes “cruel or unusual punishment” under the Massachusetts Constitution. (…

Detroit man spends more than 20 years in prison for a 12-year-old girl's murder—a crime he did not commit. Indeed, another man's fingerprints are on the murder weapon, and the defendant's confession (…

In his 2023 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. focused on the new technology while steering clear of Supreme Court ethics.

In his…

Peoria, Ill. man is charged with drug crimes after his wife calls in a domestic-violence complaint and tells the police where to find him (which happens to be suspiciously near a bag of cocaine). Man: I would like to testify in my own defense at trial. District court: Of course, but don't you…

Fallout from Baltimore's Gun Trace Task Force scandal continues. In this iteration, a man pleaded guilty to illegally possessing a gun that was…

The beleaguered D.C. crime lab has regained partial accreditation after nearly three years of being unable to process evidence fully (access full article).

The D.C. Department of Forensic Sciences’…

Midwesterners love to debate what is in the Midwest, including whether and which Plains states are Midwestern. While Midwest purists and maximalists may disagree about where Nebraska fits, they would all agree that the Cornhusker State is definitely not on the West Coast. So why is this former…

Cop in Frederick, Okla. (pop. 4k) arrests man for lightly tapping him on the cheek. Though the cop knows the man's mother lives three blocks away, he insists on towing the man's vehicle (a tow truck). Yikes! An inventory search of the truck yields an M-16 rifle that the man, a felon, is not…

Muslim man in Ohio prison alleges that prison officials failed to accommodate his observance of Ramadan while making comparable accommodations for Christians and Jews, and that officials retaliated against him when he exercised his First Amendment rights to complain about them by threatening to…