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July 31st, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
I knew that once Avvo for lawyers came, it was only a matter of time before the success of this site would spread to every other industry…then came ratemycop.com. Not really a practical extension of the idea but still the same premise. I tend to agree with Injustice in Seattle, that ratemycop has little, if no real value. It allows anonymous postings and was gaining ground as a place to call out officers that were invading the province of the thin blue line. But today. Well today we have www.therobingroom.com. Now, for all I know this site has been around for ages and I am late to the party. But I am interested to see whether our judiciary takes the same position on this site as they did on Avvo.
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DNA & Crime Labs Make the News (again).
July 21st, 2008 Filed Under Crime Lab, Legal News
Full article by Jason Felch and Maura Dolan can be read in the Los Angeles Times here.
Prosecutors and crime labs across the country routinely use numbers that exaggerate the significance of DNA matches in “cold hit” cases, in which a suspect is identified through a database search.Jurors are often told that the odds of a coincidental match are hundreds of thousands of times more remote than they actually are, according to a review of scientific literature and interviews with leading authorities in the field.Two national scientific committees, including the FBI’s DNA advisory board, have recommended portraying the odds more conservatively. But interviews with expert witnesses and DNA analysts from crime labs across the country show that few if any have adopted that approach.The FBI lab, which oversees the nation’s offender databases, has disregarded the recommendation of its own advisory board, bureau officials acknowledged. So far, the courts have ruled in law enforcement’s favor on this issue.As a result, some experts fear, a technology best known for freeing the innocent could be causing its own miscarriages of justice.”It is only a matter of time until someone is wrongfully convicted because of this,” said Keith Devlin, a Stanford mathematician who has studied the problem.DNA profiles are widely perceived as a unique genetic fingerprint. In fact, they are slivers of the human genome — up to 13 markers that contain about a millionth of the information on all the chromosomes. Relatives often share many markers, and even unrelated people on average share two or three.So DNA “matches” by themselves can never definitively link someone to a crime.The best science can do is to estimate the likelihood that a match has occurred by sheer chance. These statistics are easily distorted or misunderstood by lawyers, judges, juries and even expert witnesses.
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Smell (Two Steps Back, One Step Forward)
July 17th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News, Marijuana Laws, Marijuana Reform
It was reported this morning that Seattle Police seized a number of medical marijuana plants and medical records. The Seattle Times reports:
“The search occurred Tuesday after a nearby police bicycle officer reported the smell of marijuana…no one was arrested but officers seized about 12 ounces of marijuana in addition to the patient files and a computer…The police “have a heck of a lot of patient records I don’t think they should have,” said Douglas Hiatt, a Seattle attorney who specialized in medical marijuana cases. “For one thing, those records are protected under federal privacy laws. If you’re a medical marijuana patient, you don’t want the police to know who you are or where you live, and this is why - because you don’t get treated very well.”
Also today, State v Gande. A decision that was based on Constitutional grounds.
“We hold that the smell of marijuana in the general area where an individual is located is insufficient, without more, to support probable cause for arrest. Where no other evidence exists linking the passenger to any criminal activity, an arrest of the passenger on the suspicion of possession of illegal substances, and any subsequent searches, is invalid and an unconstitutional invasion of that individual’s right to privacy.”
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Learning the Basics
July 14th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
Source: Written by Hector Catro and published in the PI. You can read the full article here.
If an inmate acts up in the back of the patrol car, slam on the brakes so he hits the cage divider and just say you ran into a patch of squirrels.
If you get in trouble for violating policy, take your suspension during fishing season.
And if you run out of options for housing a mentally ill person, drive him to a remote area, like a railroad yard, and threaten to shoot him if he doesn’t leave town.
Those are among the lessons allegedly taught by two instructors at the state’s academy for corrections officers.
Those officers have since been fired, but so was an instructor who complained about their behavior. And now the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, which operates the Corrections Officer Academy, is under investigation by the state’s Human Rights Commission.
Doug Blair, one of the deputy directors of the training program, said the problems there have been resolved.
“When it was brought to our attention, we dealt with it immediately,” Blair said. “We were not aware that this was going on at the time, or we would not have tolerated it. We’re looking for the utmost in professional people to train our new recruits.”
But Robert Kerrigan, a corrections officer for Pierce County and one of the instructors fired, said if he did anything inappropriate in his class, it was with the full knowledge of his superiors.
“I’m man enough to admit I probably said some things I never should have said,” Kerrigan said.
But his behavior in class was meant to prepare recruits for work in a jail and, he said, was approved by the same supervisors who later fired him.
“They didn’t take any ownership on what they were allowing us to do,” Kerrigan said.
Kerrigan isn’t the only one bitter over the matter.
King County Corrections Officer Abdul Mohamed, the instructor who complained about Kerrigan and former instructor Richard Scott, believes he was fired for complaining.
The retaliation claim is one of the key elements of the investigation.
Human Rights Commission Director Marc Brenman said the investigation likely will take longer than the 135-day time period during which most cases are handled.
“This is probably going to be one of the more complicated ones,” Brenman said. “It always seems like cases involving law enforcement are tougher than many other institutions.”
The Corrections Officer Academy is just one of the courses taught at the Criminal Justice Training Center in Burien. Last year, the Corrections Division there had 55 classes with more than 900 students.
Corrections officers on loan from their agencies teach classes. Some, however, are contracted as Teacher Advisor Coach officers and are hired for two-year stints.
Kerrigan and Scott both taught classes at the academy for several years.
Scott is retired from Snohomish County and denies the accusations.
A clash of styles
In September 2005 Kerrigan was contracted as a TAC officer and Scott was hired the next year.
Both had excellent reputations, Blair said.
“They had a wealth of experience and were good instructors. The class, for the most part, liked them as instructors,” he said.
In March 2007, Mohamed was hired as a TAC officer.
Mohamed, who had been a King County Corrections Officer since 2001, was eager for the position. He believed, he said, that it would help him earn a promotion to sergeant.
From the start, though, he did not fit in with the other TAC officers.
Kerrigan found Mohamed, a martial arts expert who once provided security for the Saudi royal family, too strict and by-the-book.
“He’s a good instructor, but we all have different styles,” Kerrigan said. “He’s very forceful, very authoritarian, and that’s not my style.”
Mohamed, for his part, considered the freewheeling, casual style of Scott and Kerrigan unprofessional.
“I let those guys do their own thing, but I kept note of everything bad that they did,” Mohamed said.
Eventually, he complained.
Among Mohamed’s allegations: Scott made obscene gestures to his students, who would return the gesture; Scott sometimes rubbed the shoulders of female recruits and had other physical contact with them; and that profanity was rampant in the classrooms.
Greg Baxter, human resources director for the training commission, investigated the allegations and reported they were unfounded.
Baxter wrote that the problem was Mohamed.
“Witnesses agree that he over-dramatizes incidents, and is hypercritical of people who disagree with him, criticize him or question his judgment,” Baxter wrote.
In November, Mohamed’s contract as a TAC officer was terminated, though it was originally scheduled to last until March 2009.
Observing sergeant appalled
The next month, Mohamed complained to the Human Rights Commission. It was coincidentally around this time that the corrections officer training program was being scrutinized internally.
In 2007, directors began an assessment of the program to ensure classes were meeting the needs of the agencies hiring the recruits. Six corrections officers were asked to observe the classes.
King County corrections Sgt. Catey Hicks, a former TAC officer herself, was one of the assessors and sat in on classes for the Corrections Officer Academy in December 2007 and January 2008.
Some of what she saw appalled her.
“The COA academy is in a state of dire condition that is in desperate need of an immediate and dramatic overhaul,” Hicks wrote in her review of the program.
The sergeant described widespread profanity, none of it, she wrote, part of any role-playing.
She also noted examples of what she believed to be inappropriate sexual innuendos.
In one such incident, a recruit played the part of a handcuffed inmate. Standing behind him, Scott toyed with a soft baton in a manner to suggest he would sexually assault the recruit.
“It was obviously inappropriate, uncomfortable and highly offensive,” Hicks wrote in her report. “Particularly in light of the emphasis in corrections in the media for sexual misconduct and the recent passage of the Prison Rape Elimination Act.”
During a class on behavior management, Hicks said Kerrigan described handling an uncooperative inmate being transferred in a patrol car by doing what he called a “brake check” — stepping on the brakes hard so the inmate is thrown against the protective barrier separating the back part of the car from the driver.
Hicks recommended firing Kerrigan and Scott.
By Jan. 28, Scott was asked to leave, and Kerrigan told to leave the next day.
A crimp in their careers
“I knew it was going to happen. They actually escorted Scott off the campus,” Kerrigan said, “To me, it was done dirty.”
The terminations for all the officers were at odds with their respective course careers.
Scott, who worked for Snohomish County from 1980 to 2006, had a file full of commendations. The only disciplinary action he faced came from two instances involving calling in sick or missing a work shift, and a third incident in 1993 when he fastened an inmate to a post with duct tape as a joke. For that latter incident, Scott received a written reprimand.
Kerrigan received numerous commendations during his career in corrections, both with the academy and from his supervisors in Pierce County, where he began working in 1993. In 2007, he was named the Corrections Division’s instructor of the year, the first to receive the new award.
But he has since returned the award.
“I was hurt by what this whole thing did to me,” Kerrigan said. “I pride myself on my reputation.”
Though in corrections less than a decade, Mohamed also has been recognized many times for his work ethic and expertise in defensive tactics.
“He’s an officer who tries to get involved in anything and everything,” King County corrections Major William Hayes said of Mohamed. “He takes his job very seriously.”
Mohamed remains angry that his time with the corrections academy was so abruptly terminated and is adamant it was payback for refusing to ignore what he felt was inappropriate conduct.
“When you complain about it, you are the guy making things up, you are the guy that’s crazy,” he said.
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Supremes Take a Position on Guns
June 26th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News, Supreme Court
From Seattle Weekly’s Laura Onstot: Washington D.C.’s hand-gun ban was struck down in a 5-4 decision today by the U.S. Supreme Court. If you’ve got some time on your hands you can read the entire 157 page opinion here. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority (are you really surprised). But here’s a general taste of the reasoning:
It is therefore entirely sensible that the Second Amendment’s prefatory clause announces the purpose for which the right was codified: to prevent elimination of the militia. The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting.
I forget when deer season opens in D.C. but I’m sure the ability to tote around a major-caliber Mini Glock will help you nail one for the family dinner table, which you are now able to protect from the other Mini Glock-toting criminals just waiting to break down your door.Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the nansy pansies, er… dissenters. He was joined by David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Steven Breyer. His dissent begins on page 68, but here’s a taste for everyone who has no intention of wading through the thing.
The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. …. Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature’s authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms. Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.
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New Cell Phone Law
June 25th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News, Traffic
Starting July 1, drivers who hold a cell phone to their ear will be playing a game of roulette. The new law makes it illegal to hold the phone to your ear while driving, but law enforcement can only pull you over if you have caused another traffic offense. Those caught will have to pony up $124 for the cell-phone citation. From Annie Martin at the Kitsap Sun. Full article here.
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Busted
June 24th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
God was busted today. At high noon.
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When the Sixth Amendment Triggers
June 23rd, 2008 Filed Under Legal News, Supreme Court Rulings
ROTHGERY v. GILLESPIE COUNTY, TEXASIn an 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court made clear that an indigent defendant’s right to a lawyer begins when they are brought before a judge, and informed why they are being arrested and jailed. ”We merely reaffirm what we have held before and what an overwhelming majority of American jurisdictions understand in practice: a criminal defendant’s initial appearance before a judicial officer, where he learns the charge against him and his liberty is subject to restriction, marks the start of adversary judicial proceedings that trigger attachment of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel,” said Justice David Souter, who delivered the opinion of the court.The court ruled in favor of Walter Rothgery, whose request for a lawyer was denied by local Texas authorities for six months. Texas police relied on erroneous information that petitioner Walter Rothgery had a previous felony conviction to arrest him as a felon in possession of a firearm. The officers brought Rothgery before a magistrate judge, as required by state law, for a so-called “article 15.17 hearing,” at which the Fourth Amendment probable-cause determination was made, bail was set, and Rothgery was formally apprised of the accusation against him. After the hearing, the magistrate judge committed Rothgery to jail, and he was released after posting a surety bond. Rothgery had no money for a lawyer and made several unheeded oral and written requests for appointed counsel. He was subsequently indicted and rearrested, his bail was increased, and he was jailed when he could not post the bail. Subsequently, Rothgery was assigned a lawyer, who assembled the paperwork that prompted the indictment’s dismissal.Source: ABA Criminal Justice Section
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Art Imitates Life
June 21st, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
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Congrats
June 20th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
Congratulations to all those that were honored at the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers annual conference. Article here.
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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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Probable Cause?
May 8th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
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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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Local Legend in the Washington Post
April 24th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
Current member of the seminal punk band Flipper, Krist Novoselic, is also a blogger following political issues that run the spectrum of various topics. This week he is in the Washington Post. In the 90’s Mr. Noveselic was in a little local band called Nirvana.
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Testing Cash for Cocaine
April 16th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
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Another Local Giant Under Scrutiny
April 11th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
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No Point In Waiting
April 5th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News, Uncategorized
Former Seattle Police Chief Stamper is the author of the book “Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing.” In addition, he regularly speaks out on the topic of the War on Drugs. The full article is here.
Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper says this week’s big bust of a meth smuggling ring in Western Washington is unlikely to reduce the supply of the drug. In response to a request for a comment from The Associated Press he said, “When a dealer is taken out, 40 wannabes line up to take his place.” Stamper says the drug war has caused far more harm than good. He favors regulated legalization.Stamper was in Bellingham Thursday to speak about the failure of the drug war to an audience at Western Washington University. He was Seattle police chief from 1994 to 2000 and now lives on Orcas Island. In announcing the arrest of 22 people and the seizure of 20 pounds of meth Thursday in Tacoma, U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan said he hoped it would reduce crimes typically carried out by users.
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It’s Up to You New York…
April 5th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
Falling quick on the heels of the story from the Stranger, comes this news that we are seeking an East Coast vibe for our new Seattle Police force.
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What is the problem with SPD? Not enough cops.
March 30th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
The Stranger takes a look at the hiring issues within SPD and the proposed solutions. Although I do not agree with everything the article posits, it is very interesting. Read Jonah Spangenthal-Lee’s full article here.
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New Website
March 16th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
Ratemycop.com is picking up tons of publicity thanks to an article in Wired.
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A Hard Look at What We Are Doing
March 16th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News, Marijuana Laws, Marijuana Reform
Take some time out and check out, Marijuana: It’s Time for a Conversation. They have a program sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union and featuring noted travel writer and television host Rick Steves, “Marijuana: It’s Time for a Conversation” begins a long-overdue public discussion about marijuana and marijuana prohibition. If you have Comcast you can go to Channel 888, then go to “Community” and choose “Marijuana: Let’s Talk”(available free to subscribers 24/7). They have a program on KONG TV- Channels 6 and 16 (Seattle/Puget Sound Region) at 1:00 am on the following days: March 19, 2008, March 20, 2008, March 26, 2008, March 27, 2008.
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Random Drug Testing in School is Unconstitutional
March 13th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
High school students do not get much of a break. When it comes to Rights, it is hard to believe how few a student can invoke in the school setting. However, today the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that they still have a few left.
“If we were to allow random drug testing here, what prevents school districts from either later drug testing students participating in any extracurricular activities, as federal courts now allow, or testing the entire student population?” ”In the context of randomly drug testing student athletes, we see no reason to invent such a broad exception to the warrant requirement as such an alleged exception cannot be found in the common law.”
You can read the full article by Rachel La Corte here.
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Texas Taxes
March 8th, 2008 Filed Under Blogs, Legal News
Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog looks at the unusual taxes for marijuana (or marihuana?) and other drugs. Read Mr. Guest’s article here.
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The Wire Writer’s Take on the “War on Drugs”
March 7th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News, Uncategorized
A very eloquent article in Time that examines the United States War on Drugs.
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