Subscribe in a ReaderThe Accuracy of a Sniff
May 26th, 2008 Filed Under Dog Search
Keep an eye on your bag in Tokyo.
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32 Year Old Law is Revisited
May 23rd, 2008 Filed Under Legal News, Theft
It has been a long time coming. The law regarding what makes a theft a felony is finally being revisited. We strongly encourage anyone that is interested to contact your local Representative and encourage them to take a close look at this law. Read Adam Wilson’s full article from the Olympian here.
Next year, walking out of the mall with a stolen blouse and skirt might not be a felony.
Legislators, judges and retailers met Wednesday to talk about moving the line between misdemeanor theft and felony theft, which was set 32 years ago at $250.
“In 1976, $250 was a lot of money,” said Rep. Roger Goodman, D-Kirkland.
He advocated increasing the mark, noting that felony convictions can mean prison time, cost convicts some of their civil rights, and make finding jobs and housing difficult.
Others at the panel discussion said treating low-value theft and possession-of-stolen-property cases as felonies leaves them at the bottom of priority lists for prosecutors and community supervision officers.
“The fact is that our supervision system for felons is geared toward violent offenders,” Sen. Adam Kline said, adding that some county prosecutors in the state already have decided not to press felony charges in cases involving less than $500.
The Seattle Democrat said he has pushed a bill to temporarily increase the threshold for a felony crime, for six years. The idea was approved by the Senate this year but was panned in the House.
However, the panel discussion in Olympia was sponsored by House public safety committee Chairman Rep. Al O’Brien, D-Mountlake Terrace.
Klein credited the new momentum to less resistance from retailers.
The maximum penalty for a misdemeanor is a year in jail, and judges often suspend the entire sentence, said the chief of security for Safeway stores, Jason Moulton. He said his company often has to work with prosecutors to present judges with information on other misdemeanor thefts by suspected serial shoplifters.
“Invariably what happens, if we don’t do that, the judge sentences them as if they were a newly baptized infant,” Moulton said. “Why is there no increased penalty for people who are on their fourth conviction for gross misdemeanors?”
But separating Class C felony property crimes from rape and murder charges found in superior court might give them more attention in district court, which handles misdemeanors.
“I think at the municipal court level and more likely at the district court level … there is more focus on these people than from a superior court judge,” said Judge Michael Lambo of the district court in Kirkland.
“One thing we insist on is that restitution would be paid in full,” he added. “You don’t see that at the superior court level; (it is) not permitted by statute.”
Critical to moving the cases to lower courts, however, would be giving cities and counties more money to support supervising the offenders, said Jim Justin of the Association of Washington Cities.
Kline said he expected more progress on the idea when he introduces the measure again next legislative session.
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The Ongoing Tox Lab Saga
May 20th, 2008 Filed Under DUI, Legal News
Today in the Seattle PI, Tracy Johnson reported the following
People arrested on suspicion of drunken driving on Seattle streets anytime before mid-December will now avoid having the results of their breath tests used against them in court.
A ruling by four judges Monday is expected to affect hundreds of people awaiting trial on drunken-driving charges in Seattle Municipal Court, chipping away what can be key evidence in DUI cases because of past problems at the state toxicology lab.
The judges barred the results of all breath tests given before Dec. 18, 2007, the date the lab revamped its scientific procedures for making sure breath-test machines are accurate.
“We want drunk drivers off the road, but we want to make sure the evidence used is good,” said defense attorney Ted Vosk, who argued the case on behalf of accused drunken-drivers. “People are starting to recognize what a huge problem this was.”
Vosk said he believed the ruling would also affect Seattle’s drunken-driving cases from this year because of lingering problems from before the new procedures were put into place.
Seattle City Attorney Tom Carr plans to appeal.
He said the decision could affect hundreds of the 1,200 drunken-driving cases his office files each year, but that only “a fairly small number” of charges would likely be dismissed.
In many DUI cases, there is plenty of other evidence — including how the person was driving and how he performed on a roadside sobriety test — to prove impairment.
“This might give someone a better plea bargain than they would have had” and might lead to more people bringing their cases to trial, Carr said, but “in most cases, we’ll proceed one way or another.”
The decision also means people who were already convicted of drunken driving in the past few years could try to appeal, though it doesn’t give them a surefire way to get their cases overturned — particularly if the other evidence against them was strong.
Problems began to surface at the toxicology lab last summer, when lab manager Ann Marie Gordon was accused of signing off on scientific tests she hadn’t actually done.
Then other faulty procedures came to light involving the same subject: how lab workers test an ethanol-water solution that is used to make sure breath-test machines, kept in police stations around the state, are giving correct readings.
In Monday’s ruling, the judges found that software problems led to inaccuracies at the lab and that “not a single toxicologist ever checked” to make sure the computer was calculating data correctly.
There were also at least 170 other errors made in the lab’s effort to precisely prepare and document the solution, the judges wrote, citing mixed-up solutions, misreported data, scientists signing off for others’ work and other flaws.
A spokesman for the Washington State Patrol, which runs the toxicology lab, could not be reached for comment late Monday.
State Patrol officials have previously said they have worked hard to correct the lab’s shortcomings and restore the public’s faith in the lab’s work.
State toxicologist Fiona Couper was appointed to take over as head of the lab in March as Barry Logan, the longtime leader of both the toxicology lab and the state’s crime lab, stepped down.
Monday’s ruling — by Judges Jean Rietschel, Judith Hightower, George Holifield and Michael Hurtado — echoed rulings in Snohomish, Jefferson and Mason counties, Vosk said.
It didn’t go quite as far as one earlier this year in King County District Court.
There, a three-judge panel found that the lab would need to show that most of its problems had been fixed before they would accept any breath-test results as evidence in DUI cases again.
Prosecutors in some areas, including Kirkland and Issaquah, have simply agreed not to use breath tests until the toxicology lab’s problems are corrected, Vosk said.
Seattle’s ruling affects cases dating back roughly three years.
The timing depends on whether the accuracy of the breath-test machine that was used was tested with a solution that was improperly certified; those solutions date to the early part of 2005, Vosk said.
The toxicology lab put new protocols in place after an American Society of Crime Lab Directors audit highlighted numerous problems in October.
“I think the lab has made major improvements,” Vosk said. “I still think that they have work that needs to be done.”
You can read the full article here.
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Officer faces perjury charges in drug investigation
May 15th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
Read the article, by Adam Lynn, in the News Tribune.
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Prisons for Profit
May 15th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
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Senator…
May 12th, 2008 Filed Under Marijuana Laws
Georgia retailers soon will be banned from selling candy flavored to taste like marijuana to children. Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue signed a measure into law Wednesday that bans the sale of “marijuana flavored products” to minors — anyone under 18 — and calls for a fine of up to $500 for each offense. The measure takes effect July 1st. It targets businesses that sell the candies with drug-inspired names such as “Kronic Kandy” and “Pot Suckers.” None of the candy contains any THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.The law says the candies promote drug use. Senator Doug Stoner pushed the bill in the senate. “I don’t think that folks are aware this is going on,” Stoner told Channel 2 in April. “It’s mainly, from what I can tell, particularly targeted to minority communities.”
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Probable Cause?
May 8th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
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Aleve It Or Not
May 6th, 2008 Filed Under Uncategorized
Full article by Anthony Comier in the Herald Tribune can be read here.
When police stopped him one night in Sarasota, Villis Sanderstold told officers that the small blue pills in his car were Aleve, an over-the-counter medicine for his aching wisdom teeth. A patrolman used a drug kit to find out what the pills were. The test said the tablets were amphetamines, Sanders was jailed and his car was impounded. But it turns out that the test was wrong — prosecutors took the pills to a laboratory before Sanders’ trial and found that they were Aleve, after all. The miscue raises questions about the reliability of police drug kits and how the results of a roadside test can land an innocent person in jail.
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Microsoft is Getting in the Forensics Game
May 6th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
According to this article in the Seattle PI, Microsoft has come up with a USB key to pull computer forensic data.
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