The machine pictured above (often referred to as “an instrument” by police in lab coats) is used by police to test the amount of alcohol present in a drunk driving suspect’s blood. How do you test blood alcohol taking a breath sample? Well, this machine attempts to do this by taking a sample of a […]
You may have heard of the infamous and brutal murder of 11-year old honor-student Ryan Harris in Chicago in 1998. It’s an all-too familiar theme: police, under intense public pressure to solve a hot case, arrest a suspect, get a “confession”, and cease all further investigative leads to focus on the suspect in custody. […]
With Wolf Blitzer’s “Situation Room” making Blogging a regular feature in its coverage, I thought it would be appropriate to start referring to equally appropriate CNN coverage of blogging topics. In that connection, a quick note: CNN’s “Reasonable Doubt” series will be focusing this weekend on the impact of forensics on criminal cases. The […]
A family friend is Commander of Operations for the Issaquah Police Department and he has graciously allowed me to attend some of his department’s nightly police briefings and go on ride-alongs with some of his officers. It’s always a fascinating experience, and I never know what to expect when I go. On a recent night […]
United States Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas once said:
It’s better that ten guilty men go free, than for one man to be unjustly imprisoned.
If we really believe that, then we’ve got a lot of guilty folks to let out of prison. For those who still don’t believe that completely innocent people are sometimes wrongfully […]
You might have heard the story about the oral argument before the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. After Sarah Weddington had concluded her winning argument, Jay Floyd, speaking for the State of Texas, attempted a rather tactless joke about having to follow two pretty females, and how he was guaranteed not to get the […]
I recently attended the 12th Annual Criminal Justice Institute in Seattle, a two-day State Bar Conference covering the latest trends and caselaw relevant to the practice of Criminal Law. One of the more interesting presentations was given by a Prosecutor who commented on a big Identity Theft case she lost. Like all good criminal lawyers, […]