The state of Mississippi tried Curtis Flowers for murder six times. He was convicted in four trials, while another two ended in mistrials. Yet each of the convictions was overturned. In 2010, after his sixth trial, Flowers was given the death penalty. In June of 2019,...
Criminal Appeals
If you have a revoked license, can you lend out your car?
Yes, as long as it is still registered and insured. However, you might want to warn anyone borrowing your car that they are likely to be pulled over.That's because the U.S. Supreme Court just issued a ruling in a case in which a man was pulled over solely because the...
Supreme Court: Can states just get rid of the insanity defense?
At stake is our basic understanding of the difference between right and wrong. If someone commits a wrongful act but, due to a mental illness or defect, wasn't able to recognize that what they were doing was wrong, we don't consider them to have committed a crime.The...
SCOTUS voids death sentence after finding racist jury selection
The Montgomery County, Mississippi, prosecutor seems to have made it his career mission to convict Curtis Flowers for four 1986 murders in a small-town furniture store. Over the past two decades, he has tried Flowers for the murders six times.For each trial, the...
Federal lawsuit seeks to halt Wisconsin’s lifetime GPS monitoring
Last September, the then-attorney general announced that people with two or more convictions for sex offenses would be required to wear GPS monitors for life. He ordered 180 people to get fitted for GPS bracelets within 5 days.Those required to enter the lifetime...
‘Making a Murderer’ defendant Steven Avery wins evidence appeal
If you remember the Emmy Award-winning documentary series "Making a Murderer," you know there is good reason to suppose that the defendants, Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey, were wrongfully convicted of the murder of Teresa Halbach. As the documentary showed, Attorney...
Vermont high court case a landmark civil rights victory
In 2014, an African-American man named Gregory Zullo was pulled over in Vermont after an officer noticed his license tab was partly obscured by snow. At the traffic stop, the officer also noticed a bottle of Visine, an air freshener and a faint smell of marijuana,...
Supreme Court: ‘Excessive fines’ prohibition may apply to states
The Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, "excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." An Indiana man is testing the excessive fines rule by appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court. The...
High court ruling puts over 20,000 New Jersey DUIs in question
According to constitutional principles, when the government acts illegally during a criminal case, it is not allowed any benefit from its illegal actions. This is the basis of the exclusionary rule, which prohibits the use of evidence that was obtained illegally, such...
Should a history of prosecutor misconduct be considered on appeal?
Curtis Flowers was convicted of murdering the owner of a furniture store he once worked in, along with three employees. The alleged motive was revenge -- the store owner had fired him and withheld most of his final paycheck to pay for merchandise he had supposedly...