Have New York City district attorneys misused material witness warrants, using them not for their proper purpose – producing testimony by a reluctant witness who has knowledge useful in prosecuting a crime but who’s not suspected of wrongdoing – instead to hold suspects for several days of questioning, without legally required safeguards? That was a […]
Category: Government Misconduct
Article: Body Searches of High Schoolers Bring Indictments for Sheriff, Deputies
Warrantless Body Searches Leave Teens Traumatized A warrantless drug search of all 900 students at a southern Georgia high school has brought a multi-million-dollar court settlement to be paid to the students, and a grand jury indictment for the county sheriff and two deputies. Early one mid-April morning, the students and staff of Worth County […]
Article: Pardoned by President, Sheriff Arpaio Wants Conviction Tossed
Donald Trump’s first presidential pardon went on August 25 to Joe Arpaio, the long-time Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, first elected in 1992 to head Arizona’s biggest local law agency and re-elected five times, before losing a sixth re-election bid last year. Arpaio received a “full and unconditional” pardon for his July 31 conviction on […]
Article: New California Law Could Send Misbehaving Prosecutors to Prison
Prosecutors Who Falsify or Withhold Evidence Now Face Felony Risk Last year Governor Jerry Brown (D) signed into law a measure making it a felony for a prosecutor in California knowingly to falsify or withhold evidence. Other state laws already made falsifying or withholding evidence a misdemeanor for members of the general public, and a […]