Is warrantless GPS tracking legal?
We asked this question back in November, and on Monday, we were given an official answer. Sort of.
The Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that secretly placing a GPS tracking device on a suspect's vehicle is a "search" under the 4th Amendment. And if police want to carry on this type of search for an extended period of time, it's advisable they get a warrant.
For the second time in two years, the Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether juvenile life sentences violate the 8th Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
At issue is whether life without parole is an appropriate sentence for young juveniles whose crimes result in homicide. The Court will hear Miller v. Alabama and Arkansas' Jackson v. Hobbes, both of which involved 14-year-old defendants.
Therefore, the Court's decision will be limited to defendants aged 14 and younger.
Warrantless GPS tracking will make its way to the Supreme Court this week, when the justices are scheduled to hear oral arguments in U.S. v. Jones.
The court will consider whether police must first obtain a warrant before placing a GPS device on a suspect's car. More specifically, the Court is tasked with deciding whether the Fourth Amendment bans warrantless GPS tracking when it lasts for an entire month.
Troy Davis' death has brought to light a number of questions about the death penalty appeals process.
Just an hour prior to his Wednesday execution, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a temporary stay of execution. Three hours later, it officially denied the stay, allowing the injection procedure to go forward.
Why did the high court first grant, then deny a stay?
Texas inmate Cleve Foster was set to be executed Tuesday evening. That is, until the nation's highest court halted his execution.
The Supreme Court's stay of execution came down just hours before Foster was set to die. It was also the second time this week the court issued a stay of execution to a Texas death row inmate.
Foster, 47, is a former Army recruiter who was sent to death row for allegedly raping and murdering a woman he met at a Texas bar in 2002.
The Supreme Court has ruled that fleeing police is a violent felony.
In a 6-3 decision in Sykes v. United States, Marcus Sykes was appealing his enhanced federal sentence under the Armed Criminal, Career Criminal Act. The Act meant that Sykes got a mandatory minimum 15-year sentence that was enhanced due to his prior felonies - one of them being fleeing from police, reports CNN.
Sykes had been seen by officers driving at night without headlights. When police flashed their emergency sirens, he took off, starting a chase that included Sykes ramming through a fence and crashing into a house, reports CNN.
Is statutory rape unconstitutional when it occurs between two minors? Apparently so under Ohio's statutory rape law. The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that the law, as applied between two children under the age of 13, was unconstitutional.
The case was brought to the Ohio Supreme Court after a conviction in juvenile court of five counts of statutory rape against a boy, identified as D.B. The boy, 12, had engaged in anal sex with another boy, M.G., 11, several times in 2007, reports The Plain Dealer.
D.B. was found to be the "instigator" of the incidents, and was also described as being taller and heavier than the younger boy. Both boys had admitted to consenting to the sex. Another boy, A.W., 12, a witness and one-time participant of the boys' sexual activities, reportedly said that the incidents were consensual as well, reports The Plain Dealer.
A sharply-divided U.S. Supreme Court has found California prison overcrowding requires the state to reduce the California prison population by 30,000 prisoners.
Writing for the five-vote majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy, a native Californian, found California's 33 prisons so overcrowded that conditions violated the 8th Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, reports the San Jose Mercury-News.
The Court's order means that California will have to start releasing prisoners. Since the federal trial court's original order in 2009, California's prison system has already released about 9,000 prisoners.
FindLaw.com users are awfully concerned with marijuana law and Miranda rights, catapulting both onto the list of FindLaw.com's top legal search terms of 2010.
Miranda rights and Miranda v. Arizona are a well known part of the criminal process, popping up on television shows nightly. As an essential safeguard of constitutional rights, they've also spent a lot of time in the news this past year.
Kids for Cash.
It's a startling case of the worst kind of judicial corruption -- a story that sounds more fitting for a movie script than for reality. A Pennsylvania judge is facing up to 20 years after pleading guilty to a racketeering and conspiracy charge. Michael Conahan admitted to participating in a kickback operation that put juvenile defendants in prison for minor offenses.
Prosecutors allege that Conahan and Mark Ciavarella Jr. conspired in the Kids for Cash scam and took $2.8 million in kickbacks from privately run juvenile detention centers. Further they claim the pair arranged for the county-owned juvenile facility to be shut down so they could keep the the privately run facility at capacity. Ciavarella has maintained his innocence and plans to contest his charges at trial.
