Legal

Yesterday I started another one of my Avvo Answers experiments, in which I asked the free advice service the following question: Is it legal to own lock picks in Illinois? Chicago, IL And it it's legal, are there places where you're not supposed to have them? In particular, does Chicago have different laws? [typos in my original question] This morning I got my first answer … [Read more...] about Adventures in Avvo: Scene 2 – Take 2

This post at D.A. Confidential includes a link to a list of "The 6 Most Badass Skills You Can Learn in Under a Week." Skill number 4 is lock picking, and the article refers to a Lock Picking School In A Box. which sounds like something you could make yourself by taking a lock apart. I've always been fascinated by things like lock picking and safe cracking, and maybe some … [Read more...] about Adventures in Avvo: Scene 2 – Take 1

Radley Balko bids farewell to Kern County California D.A. Ed Jagels: You'd be hard pressed to find a law enforcement official anywhere in the country who better embodies the worst excesses of America's sharp turn toward law-and-order crime policy over last 30 years. From expanding the death penalty to eroding the rights of the accused to jacking up prison populations to … [Read more...] about Fuck Ed Jagels

South Carolina criminal defense lawyer Bobby Frederick has an excellent example today of the scourge of profitable punishment: Law enforcement agencies receive grants based on the number of DUI arrests they make - if the number of arrests goes down, they are in danger of losing that money. Law enforcement officers are given awards for the number of DUI arrests they make … [Read more...] about Profitable DUI Punishment in South Carolina

I'm guessing that most of you are neither lawyers nor career criminals, which means that, like me, your most significant role in the criminal justice system is probably going to be juror. As Norm Pattis explains, this means you're going to be kept in the dark: When we refuse to let juries know the truth about the consequences of a conviction in a criminal case we hamper a … [Read more...] about Keeping the Jury in the Dark