On October 18, 2016, NYPD Sergeant Hugh Barry responded to the home of Deborah Danner in the Bronx. Barry found Danner, a diagnosed schizophrenic, holding a pair of scissors and experiencing a mental health crisis. He persuaded her to drop them, but she then picked up a bat and somehow…
Most people will agree that there is a need for a certain level of efficiency in our criminal justice system, and the new procedures that went into effect in New Jersey on January 1, 2017, are a reflection of that. The fact is that certain cases were languishing in our…
50 years ago last week, the United States Supreme Court decided In re Gault, which guaranteed juvenile defendants many of the same due process rights held by adult criminal defendants. For the first time, a Court held that juvenile matters are, in fact, adversarial criminal proceedings, and that juvenile criminal…
Effective January 1, 2017, Missouri sex offenders guilty of 13 different sex crimes based on acts committed on or after August 28, 2006, are subject to additional security requirements. They will be required to wear GPS monitoring devices for the rest of their lives. This includes defendants who were sentenced…
Jeff Sessions, our new Attorney General, issued a Memorandum to all United States Attorneys on May 10, 2017 which states, in relevant part, that “it is a core principle that prosecutors should charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense [] By definition, the most serious offenses are those…
Dr. Salomon Melgen, a soon-to-be former ophthalmologist, who still faces criminal charges for bribing New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, was recently found guilty of healthcare claims fraud following a seven-week jury trial. His case is significant because it highlights some of the activities that typically cause medical service providers to…
In State v. Robinson, decided on May 1, 2017, the New Jersey Supreme Court considered the extent to which the “protective sweep” doctrine, which is an exception to the warrant requirement, applies to a police search of the passenger compartment of a vehicle during a traffic stop. In Robinson, an…
New Jersey has among the most liberal criminal discovery rules in the country. The State is obligated to provide defense counsel with a substantial body of material early in the case. This is unlike many – if not most – other jurisdictions. For example, in the federal system, significant amounts…
In Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), and Hall v. Florida, 572 U.S. _____, the United States Supreme Court held, among other things, that states cannot execute someone who is mentally disabled. The Court also left to the states the task of determining whether a death row inmate has…
A right to a jury trial for major criminal offenses and the jury as an institution are at the center of the Anglo-American criminal justice system. Most of a jury’s tasks are performed secretly. This is done intentionally so as to protect the integrity of the deliberative process and encourage…