Tag Archives: New City Criminal Defense Lawyers
The Use of Mug Shot Identification in New York Police Lineups, Despite Unreliability
The New York Times recently ran an article on the use of mug shot searches in New York, despite the serious risks of mistaken identification associated with the technique. The technique involves asking victims to search through hundreds of matching photos after detectives enter a description of a perpetrator into the database. New York… Read More »
Midterm Elections Will Likely Bring Significant Change to Congress & Our Civil Rights
On November 6, the midterm elections made a number of significant changes to Congress that will likely have long-lasting impacts on criminal justice, voting rights, and other important civil rights. Below, we’ve discussed some of the priority bills that the 116th Congress may tackle, and the prospective impacts on our civil liberties: Immigration A… Read More »
U.S. Supreme Court Justices Point Out The Importance Of Working With Experienced Criminal Defense
When U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently visited and spoke at the University of Houston Law Center, she emphasized just how important it is for criminal defendants to work with experienced criminal defense attorneys in order to ensure that they are properly represented. Specifically, Justice Sotomayor and Justice Kagan have long expressed frustration… Read More »
U.S. Supreme Court Could Dismantle Digital Privacy Protection Under Fourth Amendment
On November 29th, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on a case that will be monumental for determining how the Fourth Amendment protects cell phone data, or digital privacy. The case, Carpenter vs. United States, specifically poses whether the warrantless seizure and search of historical cellphone records—which reveal the location and movements of a… Read More »
Judge Cracks Down: New York Police Eavesdropping On Criminal Suspects Without A Warrant
In an important decision protecting Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches, during the week of November 15th, New York Justice Martin P. Murphy (New York State Supreme Court) made a groundbreaking decision announcing that police officers first need to obtain an eavesdropping warrant to track the cellphones of criminal suspects. This officially raises the… Read More »
The Use of Social Media as Evidence in Criminal Cases
Social media is being used and relied on more and more in criminal cases each day. Yet while prosecutors are reportedly able to obtain a search warrant in order to compel disclosure of information about a criminal defendant from a third party social media source, it can arguably be more difficult in general for… Read More »
Where Does The Responsibility For A Wrongful Conviction Lie?
It would likely be a surprise to most that, according to The New York Times, just in the last three years, Brooklyn’s Conviction Review Unit has asked judges to free 23 defendants who, it stated, were in prison when they shouldn’t have been. And just think: this is only one of many units in… Read More »
The “Sleep Apnea” Defense
While it may sound crazy, the occurrence of sleep apnea—and, specifically, how it can affect the incidence of federal crimes and one’s criminal defense—has been the subject of various news articles of late. Specifically, a man who was taken to court over groping another passenger on his flight for 30 seconds was recently acquitted… Read More »
How the New Attorney General May Affect Criminal Prosecutions and your Rights
Now that Jeff Sessions has been confirmed as attorney general at the Justice Department, it is important to note what effect he will likely have on federal civil rights enforcement, as this will affect countless numbers of people who are subject to police abuse, racial profiling, and numerous other civil rights violations. Specifically, the… Read More »
Administration Blurs the Line between Crime and Being an Immigrant in Recent Arrests
During the week of February 6th, immigration agents arrested a reported 600 people across the United States, at least 40 of them in the New York City area alone. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), officials are arresting very specific targets as opposed to spontaneously checking employees’ papers at various businesses. Although ICE… Read More »
