Blog Posts

You probably thought that was Paul Newman and Robert Redford, but no. It’s just me, standing by a picture of the real Butch Cassidy. I’ll bet you don’t often think about the historical laws of Western Territories but they still come up from time to time. For instance, in the 2022 landmark Second Amendment case,

Some attorneys are better than others. This tiny killer thought his defense attorney was one of the bad ones. Edwin Davis arose early one morning in Camden County, NJ, to go to work. His fiancé heard him leave the house just after 6:00 a.m. She did not hear the single gunshot that killed him right

On average, I get one or two Westlaw alerts a week with judicial decisions that mention ShotSpotter. Today there were three. None of the cases alone was noteworthy. I have made the point before that most decisions mention ShotSpotter only once, to explain why police were investigating. https://lnkd.in/gPRCnHB5 It is routine evidence. That’s basically what

The single best source of real-time intelligence on firearms trafficking is the retail firearms industry. That’s why it is so important for ATF to maintain a collaborative relationship with it. At the same time, it must hold bad dealers accountable. Not an easy needle to thread. ATF’s new administrative action policy should help. https://lnkd.in/gWDUhrRj I

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