A jury on Tuesday awarded $42 million to three former detainees of Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, holding Virginia-based military contractor CACI Premier Technology Inc. responsible for contributing to their torture and mistreatment two decades ago (access full article).
The three testified that they were subjected to beatings, sexual abuse, forced nudity and other cruel treatment at the prison.
What do you get when you combine a routine traffic stop with the driver's criminal history, several air fresheners in the car, driving from a job interview, and the driver's movements while looking for proof of insurance? Knoxville, Tenn. drug interdiction officer: Reasonable suspicion of drugs that justifies prolonging the stop to request a drug dog? (Which reveals an illegal gun but no drugs.) Sixth Circuit: No! And no good-faith exception. Evidence of the illegal gun should have been suppressed.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that the DEA will cease its "cold consent encounters" at airports, during which agents demand to search people's bags while telling them things like, "I don't need your consent." The suspension coincides with an inspector general report condemning the practice (access full artic
An indigent criminal defendant has a right to a public defender for many aspects of the criminal process, but not necessarily for all aspects. For example, what about an appeal of a denial of the reduction of a sentence based on certain retroactive amendments to the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines? Seventh Circuit Judge #1: Is this an advisory opinion?
President Biden on Thursday announced he is commuting the prison sentences for nearly 1,500 people and pardoning 39 others in what the White House said was the largest act of clemency in a single day in modern presidential history.
The 1,500 people had been serving long prison sentences that would have been shorter under today's laws and practices. They had been on home confinement since the COVID pandemic.
The pardons went to people who had been convicted of nonviolent crimes, including drug offenses, who the White House said had "turned their lives around."
Pope Francis appealed on Sunday for U.S. authorities to commute the sentences of death row prisoners, in an unusual request during his weekly Sunday prayer in St. Peter's Square (access full article).
A coalition of District Attorneys, Attorneys General, law enforcement officials, former judges, U.S. Attorneys and other criminal justice leaders, submitted a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to commute the sentences of all individuals currently on federal death row (access full article).
A U.S. federal judicial panel has endorsed giving public defender programs greater organizational independence within the federal judiciary, a structural shift that would grant lawyers for indigent defendants greater control over their budgets, staffing and policies (access full article).
U.S. Senator Peter Welch (D-Vt.), the Senate’s only former federal public defender, joined U.S.
With warrant, Cleveland police searched a suspected drug dealer's house. Out on the street, an officer peers into the tinted windows of a car of a person found in the suspected dealer's home—but the car was not mentioned in the warrant—and sees what he suspects is a "bag of dope." Officers tow the car but don't get a warrant. Turns out it, indeed, was "dope." Man: the search of my car is unconstitutional because police need a warrant. Police: we don't need a warrant because drugs were in plain view and here's a video of officers peering into the car and the photo taken inside the car.