Three teenage friends, two girls and one boy, regularly shared videos by group text message to each other on their mobile devices. Through the bond of their friendship, there was an unspoken assumption that whatever was shared among them would remain private. There was an element to their video sharing…
We are preparing for summer holiday travel by familiarizing ourselves with the security process for clearing airport checkpoints. In our last post we examined property or personal belongings searches. In this post we will spotlight body searches. Can I Refuse a Body Screen? Most airports have full-body scanners that use…
Before you board a commercial flight anywhere in the world, you will need to go through airport security. In the United States, the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) is responsible for clearing airline passengers to fly. The uniformed people at the airport security entrance are called Transportation Security Officers (TSOs). They…
The State of California has not executed an individual since 2006, when its capital punishment procedures relating to lethal injections were declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in Morales v. Tilton, 465 F.Supp. 2d 972 (N.D. Cal 2006). California authorizes capital punishment by gas…
As many as eight million Californians have criminal records for misdemeanor or felony crimes. All of them are subject to denied or limited employment, housing, and credit opportunities because of their criminal convictions. Many of the past crimes are for low level misdemeanors, like simple marijuana possession, or low-level felonies…
California is at the forefront of criminal justice reform. Last year, many laws were passed to reform the criminal justice system in an effort to make it fairer for Californians accused of committing crimes, whether they were serving time in juvenile detention facilities, jails, or state prisons. Abuses occur in…
Domestic violence, according to The National Domestic Violence Hotline, is a pattern of behaviors used by one partner to maintain power and control over another partner in an intimate relationship. The behavior becomes criminal when one partner hits or strikes the other partner, known as battery, which is often part…
One of the most memorable lines in the 1995 movie, The Usual Suspects, is, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he did not exist.” I am citing this movie for another reason though, specifically, for its depiction of a police line-up in California. What…
Most people’s contact with police occurs in their cars. Drivers routinely get stopped and cited for traffic and moving violations. Sometimes people are stopped because their vehicle matches a description of a vehicle of interest in a police investigation, or at a sobriety checkpoint during the holidays, or at the…
Entering a guilty plea in a criminal case goes beyond the pronouncement of the word, “guilty.” What follows is a discussion of the different types of plea options in California examining the implications of invoking each option. The California Penal Code provides for six possible pleas to an indictment for…