A criminal conviction has both direct and collateral consequences. A direct consequence of a criminal conviction is a fine, jail, or prison sentence ordered by a judge. A collateral consequence is a civil penalty or restriction associated with a criminal conviction....
A New York City police officer was convicted in a plot to kidnap, kill and eat women. The case and the appeal drew widespread attention because it raised the question of when does a virtual crime, discussed and plotted in internet chat rooms, cross into...
Drunk freshman boy meets drunk freshman girl in a dorm room. What happened? Across college and university campuses administrations are wrestling with a system that, on the whole, is poor and improving. CBS Sunday Morning, Esquire Magazine and members of the Harvard...
A string of assaults (beard cuttings) in several Amish communities in Ohio gave rise to prosecution under Section 2 the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. A jury convicted all of the men charged with this hate crime. On appeal, the appellate court reversed...
Police officers may need a search warrant if they want to deploy a drug-sniffing dog on your car. Prior to Rodriguez v. United States, the law was unclear about how long an officer can wait before deploying a drug-sniffing dog on a stopped motor vehicle. For example,...
The Supreme Court made it harder (than it was before) to prosecute people for threats made on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. A Pennsylvania man was convicted of threatening another person over interstate lines (under 18 U.S.C. § 875(c)). This was the first...
If an officer asks if he can search your property (your car, your house, your pockets), it means that he knows that he doesn’t have legal cause to conduct that search. Therefore, the only thing that may lay between you and your arrest is your response to the officer’s...
Not long ago, the law in Ohio said that if you were convicted of a single DUI offense at any point in your life, you were ineligible to seal any criminal offense(s) on your record, even if that offense was totally unrelated to your DUI case. Thankfully, the...
When they’re investigating a crime, police will often induce a suspect into making incriminating statements by telling them that they simply want to hear “your side of the story.” People often fall for this trap, thinking that by cooperating and giving the police...
The U.S. Attorney in Cleveland recently announced charges against eight men accused of smuggling “large amounts” of drugs from Mexico to the U.S. These particular entrepreneurs were captured as a result of an investigation by the Northern Ohio Law Enforcement Task...