As if the recent current events surrounding Eric Garner and Michael Brown were not enough, this month saw two more high profile cases detailing police misconduct and brutality which made national news. In South Carolina, the tasering and shooting of Walter Scott occurred as he was running away from the…
On Friday, April 3rd, 28 year old San Diego man Kevin Bollaert was convicted in the San Diego Superior Court and sentenced to 18 years for 27 counts of identity theft and extortion via California’s newly enacted revenge porn law. Additionally, he was ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution. Although…
Well, the answer is everything. Courts and the public opinion are increasingly viewing the family pet and other companion animals as family members, and the legal trend of covering pets in domestic violence (DV) protective orders are expected to increase. This trend responds to the evidence that 71% of women…
Recently, two civil rights groups (the San Francisco branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Asian Law Caucus) filed a federal lawsuit against the San Francisco Police Department alleging that a police inspector not only violated department rules and city law whilst working with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism…
In the beginning of this month, a group of 15 young people from Lincoln Park, San Diego, who were alleged to be part of the notorious Lincoln Park gang, were charged with criminal conspiracy related to two dozen local shootings within San Diego County. The San Diego County District Attorney’s…
Imagine that you are about to sit down with your family for dinner, and somebody knocks on the door. It is the police, and they were hoping you would go down to the station to “answer” some questions about a homicide next door. You think nothing of it, because you…
Because criminal records are public records, those with prior convictions need to know that there are certain circumstances which may qualify them to get their records “wiped.” These vessels by which one’s records can be cleaned vary depending on the type of crime and state law involved. Expungements Expungements are…
What Exactly is a Polygraph Test? In tv shows and movies, polygraphs (or “lie detector tests”) are often painted as mechanisms by which a defendant “gets off” or proves his or her innocence. Polygraphs are machines that hook up to a person to measure their physiological indicators such as perspiration…