Category Archives: United States Supreme Court Rulings

This question is an important one because a search conducted without sufficient probable cause for a search warrant may be a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. Previously, the smell of marijuana was an indicator of illegal activity. With weed now being legal for recreational use, the waters are murky.  Background: The Automobile […]

  If officials in Arkansas had their way, yesterday would have been the first of eleven execution days. After more than a decade without performing a single legal execution, the state of Arkansas had planned to administer a lethal injection to eight inmates within a matter of days. However, since scheduling the back-to-back executions, authorities […]

United States Supreme Court Hands Down Ruling Laws change. Opinions that were once held to be immutable, become fluid with time. And while this is often viewed as a good thing for people in the corrections system, it must be very hard for lifers. Especially those who were put away as juveniles decades ago. They […]

Supreme Court to Review Woods v. Donald  This term the U.S. Supreme Court granted review of a Michigan case, Woods v. Donald. Out of all the cases that come before the Court for review, only about 1% get chosen to be heard per term.

Reasonable Mistake of Law Still Gives Reasonable Suspicion This week, in an 8-1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment is not violated when a police officer makes a traffic stop based on a reasonable but mistaken understanding that the driver is breaking a traffic law. In Heien v. North Carolina, the […]

Report Criticizes State Law A recent report on juveniles in prison criticizes the state of Michigan for “funneling children into Michigan’s adult prison system due to a series of harsh ‘tough on crime’ laws…” From 2003 through 2013, the Michigan Council on Crime and Delinquency studied incarcerated youth who had been tried as adults; gathering […]

In the case of Lafler v. Cooper, the United States Supreme Court recently issued a ruling that stands up for the rights of criminal defendants everywhere. This case began in Michigan and worked its way to the United States Supreme Court. In the case, Anthony Cooper was charged as a habitual offender with the Michigan […]

All nine Justices on the United States Supreme Court recently ruled that the police must obtain a search warrant before attaching a GPS device to a suspect’s vehicle. In the case, called United States v. Jones, a Washington, D.C. nightclub owner named Antoine Jones was suspected of Cocaine drug trafficking. Police attached a GPS to […]

Juan Smith was found guilty of five murders in a New Orleans trial court. At his trial, the government presented the testimony of a witness who said Smith was the first gunman to come through the door during a robbery. However, prosecutors held back the fact that that same witness had previously told a detective […]