Latinos Reporting Crime Less Due to Fear of Deportation
Latinos Reporting Crime Less Due to Fear of Deportation
If you witness a crime being committed, you will likely call the police or inform nearby authorities. While doing this, you may also decide to walk away from the area because you don’t want to get caught up in the middle of it. Both of these actions are natural, but recent reports suggest that informing police about a crime is not something that is happening among a certain group of…
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Attorney General Sessions and President Trump Feel That Courthouses are a Great Place to Arrest Undocumented Immigrants
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents – both in uniform and in plain clothes – have recently made arrests inside of courtrooms or courthouses and just outside of court complexes, according to recent reports. ICE has gone so far as to detain an alleged domestic violence victim who showed up to court.1 In response to these recent events, the California chief justice sent a letter to Donald Trump’s administration asking…
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New Law Prevents Double Payment of Bail (PC 1305)
The expectation most people have is that a person who is arrested for a crime will be removed from the community and put in jail. However, if you think about it, bail is exactly in line with one of the most fundamental principals of our criminal justice system: each person is innocent until they are proven guilty. This is why even after you are arrested for a crime, in many…
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Should Recording Someone’s Violent Crime Be a Crime? (PC 667.95)
Social media allows us to share the most compelling moments of our lives. All too often, those moments include fist fights and criminal activity. It’s almost impossible to see a fight in public without also seeing dozens of cellphones recording it while people shout “World Star!” Now, it seems that some young people may even think it’s “cool” to commit crimes on video. For this reason, California lawmakers have introduced…
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Do You Have to Keep Your Gun in the Trunk of Your Car? (PC 25140)
California gun laws are extremely complex and can be difficult to understand. You have the right to own firearms, but that doesn’t give you the right to take a gun wherever you please. A new California gun law answers one question regarding your gun rights: Do you have to lock your gun in the trunk if you leave it in your car? California Passes Secure Gun Law (PC 25140) Senate…
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Can I Legally Possess a Firearm If I Have Been Convicted of Misdemeanor Battery?
The legality of firearm possession for people who have committed crimes in California is often a difficult issue. If you have been convicted of certain crimes, not only are you subject to California’s laws restricting gun possession, but you are also subject to a strict federal law – the Lautenberg Amendment (18 U.S.C. 922(g)(9)) imposes a lifetime ban on gun ownership by any person who has committed a “misdemeanor crime…
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Your Murder Case Could Be Thrown Out if Police Don’t Record the Conversation (PC 859.5)
In a fair criminal justice system, the guilty are punished and the innocent are set free. Unfortunately, our system is not always fair, and innocent people sometimes go to prison for crimes they did not commit. In 2015, 149 people were exonerated nationwide for crimes they did not commit. In 27 of those cases, the person was convicted based on a false confession. That is why the California legislature, in…
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Is It a Crime to Tape Record Your Doctor? (PC 632.01)
Visiting the doctor can be an intimidating experience, especially when your doctor is using complex medical terms that you don’t understand. So, when your doctor calls you to give you medical results or advice, you may feel compelled to record that conversation so you can be certain of what the doctor told you. However, what you do not realize is that recording your doctor without his or her permission is…
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Why You Need to Contact an Experienced Attorney Before Paying Money to a Bondsman
Typically when a person is arrested and sent to jail for a crime in California, their reaction is to hire a bail bondsman to bail them out. The bail bondsman will usually charge a statutory fee of 10% of the bail amount. This means that if you or a loved one is incarcerated for a crime where the bail is set at $100,000, you will pay a fee to the…
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Erasing the Past: How Clearing Your Browser History Could Land You in Prison
Khairullozhon Matanov could have said nothing. Instead, the 24-year-old taxi driver voluntarily told police what he knew about his friends Tamerlan and Dhzokhar Tsarnaev, the two brothers who set off bombs near the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon. He told police he had dinner with the Tsarnaev brothers the night of the bombing, but lied about some of the other aspects of his relationship to the brothers. Matanov…
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