Thomas Chittum

Do you have anyone stored in your phone under a nickname? “Princess,” perhaps. Or maybe “bbygurl.” Or just “Bae.” Well, this killer did that too. At precisely 8:16 p.m. one evening in Cincinnati, ShotSpotter detected gunfire and alerted police. They arrived to find a victim lying facedown in the street, a fatal wound to his […]

As you can probably tell, the man in this picture is not hunting. Why does that matter? Because if he was, he might not be facing a federal firearm charge today. Federal law prohibits certain categories of people from possessing firearms. Convicted felons are the most well-known category, but it also includes two types of

Because much of the discussion about guns today revolves around their use in crime, it’s easy to lose sight of the original reason the Second Amendment was included in the Constitution: resisting tyranny.   We devote quite a bit of attention to this historical underpinning in the class I teach at William S. Boyd School

Besides alerting police to shootings (which it did in this case), ShotSpotter can also be used to corroborate what witnesses say. Here’s a straightforward example. In Massachusetts, to revoke someone’s probation, a court can rely on hearsay only if it “has substantial indicia of reliability.” To assess that, courts will look at, among other things,

You have the right to remain silent. You also have the right to remain PARTIALLY silent. And if you save the good stuff for trial, that’s okay. In Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610 (1976), SCOTUS made it clear the prosecution cannot use post-arrest silence to imply guilt. The same is true if you talk

As the old adage goes, sometimes a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I assume that’s what happened here. I’ve previously written about why I admire undercover agents. They are some of the bravest public servants we have. https://lnkd.in/gJiZUncx I’ve also written a lot about the public safety threat posed by