Recently in Criminal Law Category

The Supreme Court came down on the side of warrantless DNA swabs on Monday, stating in a 5-4 majority that they did not violate a defendant’s 4th Amendment rights.

In a somewhat surprising split, the Maryland v. King majority stated the Maryland law DNA sampling law did not violate convicted rapist Alonzo Jay King’s rights by authorizing police to take a DNA sample from King after arrest, reports Reuters.

How does this ruling on DNA swabs sit with the Court’s prior rulings on collecting physical evidence from defendants?

In the Boston bombing case, authorities have claimed that the public safety exception to Miranda allowed them to question Dzhokhar Tsarnaev without first reading him his Miranda rights.

Tsarnaev's questioning by the High Value Interrogation Group was conducted days before the 19-year-old suspect was read his Miranda rights on Monday, The Huffington Post reports.

The public safety exception to the general rule of Miranda comes from the N.Y. v. Quarles case, and its use in the upcoming Tsanaev case may broaden its scope.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that police need a valid reason if they want to detain a criminal suspect far away from the site of a search.

In a case out of New York, the High Court ruled that police needed a better reason than making it safer and easier to conduct a search if they wanted to hold a man 1 mile away from his home as officers searched the man's home.

Generally, the Court ruled that police may detain people in connection with executing a search warrant. But cops will need another valid reason if they want to detain a suspect far from the place being searched, writes Reuters.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that a drug dog's "sniff is up to snuff," despite a Florida court's ruling that police failed to prove the dog's sniff was reliable.

The High Court found that police training records established the reliability of the dog, Aldo, in sniffing out illegal drugs. As a result, his handler had reason to believe that a vehicle was carrying illegal drugs based on the dog's reaction, reports Reuters.

The ruling has the potential to give law enforcement authorities much greater leeway in relying upon trained canine officers in finding contraband, without first establishing the dog's reliability.

The Michigan Supreme Court recently dealt a blow to the state's medical cannabis industry when it ruled that prosecutors can shut down medical marijuana dispensaries as public nuisances.

Friday's 4-1 decision held that the transfer of marijuana from patient to patient, which is how marijuana transactions took place in many of Michigan's pot clubs, was not legal under the state's medical marijuana law, Yahoo! News reports.

Under Michigan's public nuisance laws, a place is a nuisance if it involves danger, annoyance or injury to the public in general. According to the Michigan State Bar, the public nuisance law applies to "low grade criminal activities that interfere with the ... public health, morals or peace."

Supporters of medical marijuana have been trying to change the perception of pot for years. But they have lost again, this time on appeal in a federal court.

Americans for Safe Access initiated this case in 2011 when they petitioned the Drug Enforcement Administration over marijuana's classification. The drug is listed as a "Schedule I" substance, meaning it has no medical use and a high potential for abuse, at least according to the DEA.

ASA, along with other groups and several individuals, were hoping to change that definition with new evidence. But they couldn't get the court on their side.

New York City's "stop and frisk" policy has been the subject of debate in the past, but Wednesday's ruling may put a serious dent in its enforcement.

Judge Shira Scheindlin was asked to rule on the New York Police Department's tactic of performing a "stop and frisk" on people entering and exiting certain buildings. While the trial hasn't begun, Scheindlin has issued a temporary injunction against the practice.

That means police officers won't be able to rely on people loitering around certain buildings as a reason to do a "stop and frisk." But how long will that stop them?

Judge Richard Posner is famous in the legal world for issuing philosophical court opinions. This time, Posner has pontificated about long prison terms that end up being "de facto life sentences."

Poser serves on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which recently considered the appeal of David Michael Craig. Craig challenged his sentence which included a 30-year sentence and three concurrent 20-year sentences, to be served after the first 30 years.

That means Craig, 49, will be in prison for 50 years. His crime was heinous, but Posner pondered whether the punishment still fit the crime.

It's been more than two years since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and BP has finally reached a settlement with prosecutors.

The London-based company has agreed to plead guilty to 14 criminal charges including manslaughter, and will pay $4 billion in fees and fines over the next five years, The Washington Post reports. That's in addition to a $525 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission that will be paid over the next three years.

The plea will settle many of the criminal charges against BP, which has also moved to settle thousands of of civil claims brought by individuals, Reuters reports.

To keep tabs on a piece of private property suspected of growing marijuana, the Drug Enforcement Administration set up warrantless hidden cameras.

The cameras did their job and the DEA allegedly found Manuel Mendoza and Marco Magana of Green Bay, Wis. growing over 1000 marijuana plants on Magana's property. But the defendants asked the court to discard evidence obtained from the hidden cameras as a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights.

Unfortunately for the two, a court ruled against them on Monday. The decision was that warrantless camera surveillance can be ok in some circumstances.