lawenforcement
Federal prosecutors are recommending a 20-year prison sentence for Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey, who was found guilty last fall of one count of international concealment of money laundering. It's an insane ask for someone whose only conviction is for one nonviolent crime, especially considering the circumstances of that conviction. Concealment?"The context for the international concealment money laundering conviction is critical," writes Lacey's lawyers in a motion seeking a less severe sentence. "This is not a case where the defendant went off on his own to hide an asset. Instead, in the...
Reason
The Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures extends to the length of a seizure, a federal court ruled last week, significantly restricting how long law enforcement can retain private property after an arrest. "When the government seizes property incident to a lawful arrest, the Fourth Amendment requires that any continued possession of the property must be reasonable," wrote Judge Gregory Katsas of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in a unanimous ruling. Most courts of appeal to pass judgment on the issue—namely, the 1st, 2nd, 6th, 7th, and...
Reason
Perhaps the greatest rebuttal to calls for confidence in police is the conduct of law enforcement officers at Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas. There, on May 24, 2022, almost 400 cops not only stood around while a lunatic murdered children and teachers, but they prevented parents from stepping in to do what those in uniform wouldn't. Now, new reporting gives greater insight into the depths of the officers' inaction that day, and just how unwise it is to rely on them for protection. Documented Police FailuresThe failures of police officers in Uvalde aren't open to dispute. "At R...
Reason
If Texas follows through with its plans to impose the death penalty on Robert Roberson this October, it will become the first state in the country to execute someone whose conviction was based on what's commonly known as "shaken baby syndrome." The former detective who arrested Roberson for murdering his 2-year-old daughter is no longer convinced that he did it. Roberson's attorneys say they have new evidence based on previously hidden medical records that his child really died of severe pneumonia, and they argue in a recently filed motion for a stay of execution that, since Roberson's trial, ...
Reason
I spent some time last week at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) summit, which attracts state lawmakers and legislative staff from around the country and was held this year in Louisville, Kentucky. The event's expo hall was packed with hundreds of booths, largely featuring the sorts of associations, businesses, and nonprofits you might expect to be trying to influence state policy. Perhaps not as expected was a sex worker rights group. Not as expected, that is, if you don't know anything about Decriminalize Sex Work (DSW). Since its founding in 2018, the organization has bee...
Reason
Principled advocacy of liberty is hard, we get it. Many of us find something so offensive or irksome that all live-and-let-live sentiments evaporate. For former criminal defense attorney Dana Bazelon, now policy director for reformist Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, that issue is guns and the violence she attributes to them. She's discarded concerns about government abuses to endorse a wide-reaching surveillance state. "If the idea of more police cameras makes you queasy, I understand: I spent the first decade of my ...
Reason
This is part five of Operation Shakedown, a series about heavy-handed traffic enforcement tactics and property seizures in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. Click here to read part one. When officers stopped a Greyhound bus for going 5 mph over the speed limit on Interstate 85 in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, they were not interested in traffic enforcement. The real target was drugs and cash, which the police pursued with factory-like precision. NASCAR pit crews could learn something about speed and efficiency from these experts. The Florence County deputy who pulled that bus over on O...
Reason
On an early morning in 2017, Curtrina Martin inadvertently attended a pyrotechnic exhibit she compares to the Fourth of July. Except it was October, and it was inside her home in Georgia. The source was considerably less joyful. The FBI detonated a flash grenade in the house and ripped the door from its hinges in a raid to arrest a man, Joseph Riley, accused of gang activity, who lived in a different house approximately one block over. The agents would not realize their mistake until after they made their way into Martin's bedroom, where they found her and her then-fiancé, Hilliard Toi Cliatt,...
Reason
People have rights—even, or perhaps especially, when the police launch investigations against them—but an out-of-state Atlanta driver got little help from the Constitution when a deputy pulled him over on October 5, 2022, in Cherokee County, South Carolina. The driver had no warrants for his arrest, and the deputy did not witness any criminal conduct. The driver was stopped for allegedly following another vehicle too closely on Interstate 85 in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. The Fourth Amendment guarantees the right to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unre...
Reason
South Carolina sheriff's deputies faced backlash when they boarded a Shaw University charter bus in October 2022 and started rummaging through students' personal belongings without a warrant. The historically black school filed a complaint with the Department of Justice. Now, newly released public records show the police intrusion was not an isolated incident. Officers routinely pulled over and searched commercial buses during Operation Rolling Thunder in 2022, in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. Officials claim they do not know the precise number of bus searches that year, but a tally shee...
Reason
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