Tag Archives: criminal defense

I will not violate your 4th Amendment rights; not on a Jeep, not with GPS.(Updated x2)

United States v. Jones

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/101259.pdf

SCOTUS ruled today that plac­ing a GPS track­ing device on a defendant’s vehi­cle is a search within the mean­ing of the 4th Amendment.

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I believe…

I sat down with my law school’s career devel­op­ment alumni liai­son (or what­ever fancy title they use) this past week. She was friendly, she tried to be as help­ful as pos­si­ble, and (to be fair) she did give me some good ideas about my job search.

This post is not about that.

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So much to learn — Updated

Work­ing at the Office of the Pub­lic Defender is incredible.

I’m learn­ing so much about the prac­tice of crim­i­nal law, it’s actu­ally pretty pathetic. I mean, you’d like to imag­ine that after law school and the bar you know some­thing about the real­ity of crim­i­nal law.
Some­thing.
Any­thing at all.

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I forget, what are we trying to accomplish again?

Troy Davis was exe­cuted last night.

I can’t explain the details sur­round­ing his case bet­ter than Jeff Gamso has; I can’t argue with Mark Osler’s arti­cle on cnn​.com explain­ing why we should err on the side of not mur­der­ing some­one. It almost seems like there is noth­ing left to say… but I can’t sit now and say nothing.

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OPD Interning

Yes­ter­day I interned at the Office of the Pub­lic Defender in dis­trict court. This was the first day of my new sched­ule, work­ing my 40 hours in 4 days and tak­ing Tues­days off to intern at the OPD. It was frig­ging fantastic.

Since I’m still wait­ing on my bar results the most I can do is act as a law clerk, but that’s still much more than I’ve had the chance to do before now.

The more I find out about the court and its pro­ce­dures (not civil, not crim­i­nal, but admin­is­tra­tive) the more igno­rant I feel. But at least it’s tem­pered with the knowl­edge that I’m in the right place to learn.
Turns out that the dis­trict court I’m work­ing at splits up the court­rooms by dis­trict. I was assigned to one court­room and I shadow the attor­neys who work that room.

Utter chaos started the day; peo­ple all over the place, lawyers snatch­ing con­ver­sa­tions with clients and their fam­i­lies before­hand and run­ning out of the court­room for min­utes at a time to fol­low up with clients after­ward.
Between the two attor­neys I shad­owed, there were about 20 cases dur­ing the morn­ing docket, but only 5 or so dur­ing the afternoon.

When the after­noon docket was fin­ished, one of the attor­neys asked me if I found it bor­ing or excit­ing. I told him that I’m still at the point where it’s all excit­ing, no mat­ter how bor­ing it is.

Maryland Judiciary Watch, vol. 8

DANIEL A. McNEAL

 v.

STATE OF MARYLAND

http://​www​.mdcourts​.gov/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​s​/​c​o​s​a​/​2011​/​1992​s​09​.​pdf

This opin­ion by the Court of Spe­cial Appeals addresses sev­eral issues. The one I want to high­light is the sec­ond ques­tion pre­sented to the court.

2. Did the trial court err in admit­ting extrin­sic evi­dence of a prior incon­sis­tent state­ment made by the Appel­lant when the Appel­lant admit­ted hav­ing made the state­ment and explained why he had made it?

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Maryland Judiciary Watch, vol. 7

RICKY SAVOY
v.
STATE OF MARYLAND

http://​mdcourts​.gov/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​s​/​c​o​a​/​2011​/​120​a​09​.​pdf

This opin­ion, from the MD Court of Appeals, involves a manslaugh­ter case from 1994 in which the trial judge gave jury instruc­tions that changed the def­i­n­i­tion of “rea­son­able doubt.“
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Maryland Judiciary Watch, vol. 6

RAMON LOPEZ

v.

 STATE OF MARYLAND

http://​mdcourts​.gov/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​s​/​c​o​a​/​2011​/​24​a​08​.​pdf

This is a pretty straight­for­ward issue involv­ing a defen­dant who did not trust his lawyer and thought he could do a bet­ter job.

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A look at the Maryland Wiretap Law

            The Wire­tap law in Mary­land exists to pro­tect society’s right to pri­vacy by pro­tect­ing con­ver­sa­tions we engage in, think­ing that we know who can hear us. All laws, how­ever worded, carry with them the poten­tial to be mis­used, to crim­i­nal­ize activ­ity unin­tended by the leg­is­la­tors. The Mary­land Wire­tap law has been the focus of media atten­tion recently because of efforts of police offi­cers to use the Wire­tap law to crim­i­nal­ize video­tap­ing police inter­ac­tions. This is an inap­pro­pri­ate appli­ca­tion of the cur­rent law that does noth­ing to fur­ther the pub­lic pol­icy inter­est in pri­vacy. Fur­ther­more, such an appli­ca­tion of the Mary­land Wire­tap law goes against the inter­est soci­ety has in being able to super­vise the police.

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Maryland Judiciary Watch, Vol.4

ELROY MATTHEWS, JR.
v.
STATE OF MARYLAND
http://​mdcourts​.gov/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​s​/​c​o​s​a​/​2011​/​2801​s​09​.​pdf

Another opin­ion by the Court of Spe­cial Appeals, another opin­ion by Judge Moy­lan — this time focus­ing on what con­sti­tutes an “ille­gal sen­tence.“
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