BLOG BULLETS: A recent Chief Judge Kozinski dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc decries an “epidemic” of Brady violations. Chief Judge Kozinski also decries an appellate review standard that will often allow convictions to stand despite the epidemic of Brady violations. Use these concerns in pretrial litigation of Brady issues, by arguing that […]

2013 saw many court victories in California in the area of police brutality civil rights. We at California Police Brutality Lawyers are especially happy with the following three holdings, which expand the ways victims of police brutality can secure justice under state and federal law: Hayes v. City of San Diego – California Supreme Court, […]

BLOG BULLETS: Treating the guidelines as advisory also means a court can look to the underlying purpose of a guideline in considering whether and how to apply it and can also look to guidelines other than the ones that technically apply. You can use this approach to reconstruct a better and more appropriate guideline for […]

BLOG BULLETS There’s a five-step process you can use to “deconstruct” a guideline. Step 1 is to track the history of the guideline, through Commission reports and other records and through the amendment history of the guidelines. Steps 2, 3, and 4 are to look for analysis and criticism of the guideline in the Commission’s […]

BLOG BULLETS:   The child pornography guideline can be deconstructed through extensive express judicial criticism in multiple opinions, a history of amendments based almost completely on Congressional directives rather than empirical research, and the Sentencing Commission’s own report recognizing problems with the guideline. The career offender guideline can be deconstructed based on its original creation […]

BLOG BULLETS:   The empirical evidence the Sentencing Commission claims to have relied on in formulating the guidelines is “past practice,” i.e., the sentences typically given on average prior to the guidelines. But there’s a dirty little secret – namely, that the Commission completely excluded probationary sentences, which were 38% of all sentences, from its […]

BLOG BULLETS:   Supreme Court case law has recognized that the Sentencing Commission is supposed to be an entity that can conduct empirical studies of sentencing and the guidelines are supposed to reflect that empirical study. Multiple Supreme Court cases recognize the possibility – and the actual fact – that some guidelines don’t fit this […]

November 12, 2013 | By James Barragan A federal jury awarded $210,000 in punitive damages Tuesday to five inmates who claimed in a lawsuit they were beaten by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies. Five deputies who were supervising other officers during the incident at Men’s Central Jail were ordered to pay the damages. The beatings […]

BLOG BULLETS:   The government can’t cure a breach – even if it’s an honest mistake – by correcting its recommendation at some later point in the proceedings. Harmless error analysis doesn’t apply to breaches of plea agreements, so it doesn’t matter if the court says the breach didn’t affect it and it wasn’t going […]

By Christina Villacorte, Los Angeles Daily News Los Angeles County taxpayers are on the hook for at least $740,000 in damages after a federal jury Thursday found dozens of Sheriff’s Department supervisors and deputies “engaged in malicious and sadistic conduct” against inmates at Men’s Central Jail in 2008. During the five-week trial, jurors watched videos […]