Criminal Defense

Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Maryland follows the Frye/Reed test for admitting expert testimony into evidence: “[B]efore a scientific opinion will be received as evidence at trial, the basis of that opinion must be shown to be generally accepted as reliable...

What is the meaning of the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel — and the Fifth and Fourtheenth Amendment right to due process — if prosecutors communicate directly with unrepresented criminal defendants soon after their arrests, to start the clock on short court...

In Virginia, the jury decides guilt-innocence, and recommends a sentence in the event of a conviction. Jerome Rawls was sentenced to 25 years in prison on the jury’s recommendation, for second degree murder. At the time of sentencing, Rawls’s lawyer, the prosecutor, and the trial judge...

Years ago, I heard a story that a lawyer — possibly Clarence Darrow — distracted a jury from the opponent’s argument, impressed that Darrow could create a very long ash with his cigarette or cigar, in the days that smoking was allowed in courtrooms. Recently,...

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides, in part, that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” However, over thirty-five years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that witnesses can be compelled to give immunized testimony even...

A survey would likely find infinitely more arrests for finger flipping than finger pulling. However, the First Amendment protects finger flipping, as confirmed earlier this year by the Western District of Pennsylvania: By 2006, numerous federal courts, including a United States District Court in Pennsylvania,...

Thanks to Barry Scheck for posting about the injustice of the death penalty, which continues to ensnare innocent people, and for referencing a recent in-depth New Yorker article presenting the case that Cameron Todd was innocent of arson, but still executed in 2004 for the...

Virginia and Maryland have statutory provisions requiring defendants, pretrial, to demand the presence at trial of drug chemists and breath technicians, or to waive that right otherwise. Yesterday, Virginia’s Court of Appeals made clear that such a requirement is met when the defense files a...

Sentencing judges often are fond of "treatment", without sufficiently considering how beneficial the treatment will be. Too many treatment providers are overly paternalistic, bureaucratic, and barely hesitant to tell on probationers to judges. Who wants to spend years to obtain counseling degrees and licenses only to become tattle-tales to judges?...

When the prosecution tries to use documents to prove speeding in its case in chief — for instance in a jailable Virginia reckless driving case — consider responding with the following pre-Melendez cases that limit hearsay evidence to establish such proof: Royals v. Commonwealth, 198...