Archive for the ‘Evidence’ Category
The U. S. Supreme Court and the Utah Supreme Court have repeatedly held that a person’s home is subject to the greatest protection under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Before an officer may search your Utah home, the officer must first secure a search warrant from a Magistrate Judge. There are a few exceptions to this general rule but the exceptions are narrow. Even though an officer does not have a warrant, if the officer is attempting to search your home, you should not resist the officer. Instead, step out of the way and let the officer do what he or she is going to do. Do not consent to the search but do not resist it either. It is best to raise these issues in court rather than risk a confrontation between yourself and the police. Rarely does a citizen win in such situations and they are almost always a threat to your physical safety. If the officer asks you questions, you should respectfully decline to answer them. You are under no legal obligation to answer questions even if the officer has a warrant.
When dealing with the police remember the three golden rules:
1. Don’t trust or believe the police.
2. Don’t resist being handcuffed.
3. Don’t say a damn thing
Tags: search warrant
Posted in Constitutional Rights, Dealing with Police, Evidence, Utah Law | No Comments »
A miracle for criminal defense attorney, Jon Paul Rion, happened when the conviction in his case was reversed. Rion’s client, China Arnold was convicted of putting her baby in the microwave oven. However, The Dayton Daily News quoted, ” The conviction was reversed based upon prosecutorial misconduct and the recantation of the state’s star witness, Linda Williams, according to Arnold’s defense attorney, Jon Paul Rion. After Arnold was convicted, Williams came forward and said that she lied to the jury about Arnold confessing that she put her daughter Paris Talley in a microwave oven… Williams said that she was threatened with jail time by members of the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office if she did not stick to the original testimony that she gave the jury during Arnold’s trial”. Rion was able to find out after the trial that “the prosecutor hid a witness in motels for months, changing motels to avoid discovery, and failed to reveal critical information”. Luckily, for attorney Rion and his client Arnold, their not so happy ordeal ended with justice being served.
Tags: Microwave Baby, murder
Posted in Crimes, Evidence | No Comments »
photo: ep_jhu
The result of a drug test may be positive, but that does not mean that the one being tested used the alleged substance. The test may have revealed a false positive. There are many reasons for a false positive result on a drug test. The lab that performs the test may have tainted the sample, the lab may also have poor quality equipment or lab technicians, or you may another type of medication or food in your system that taints the results. Some Utah’s most commonly prescribed and OTC drugs that can cause a false positive on a drug test are:
- Vitamin B2 – (THC false positive)
- Tylenol 3 – (may detect traces of opiates)
- Robitussin DM – (Heroin, Opiates, Morphine false positives)
- Adderall – (could, as an amphetamine show a false positive for Meth)
- Ibuprofen – (false positive for THC/Marijuana)
A longer list can be found at this AskDocWeb article as well as a long list of references providing information on the numerous types of false positives. If you have incorrectly failed a drug test it is important to contact a qualified criminal defense attorney who can accurately prove in court that your diet or use of vitamins and prescription medication may have created an inaccurate result. A failed drug test could cause you to be fired from your job, prevent you from applying for new jobs, impose large fines and perhaps even create jail time. Therefore, having an Utah criminal lawyer equipped to deal with drug scarios is important in mainting your job and life.
Tags: drug testing, Evidence, false evidence
Posted in Drugs in Utah, Evidence | 1 Comment »
photo: Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice Henry "Hank" Skinner
Henry Skinner is on death row in Texas for the 1993 murder of his girlfriend and her two adult sons. Skinner has always maintained his innocence, even when he came within 47 minutes of being executed in March before the Supreme Court agreed to a stay of execution. In his trial the jury only deliberated for a period under two hours, and reportedly strongly based their decision on the testimony of Skinner’s neighbor and DNA evidence. However, not of all the DNA evidence collected was tested, including the hairs that were found grasped in a victim’s hand. After new tests, the hairs, and other DNA evidence did not match Skinner. More importantly, the star witness Andrea Reed, Skinner’s neighbor and ex-girlfriend, has recanted her testimony. Reed stated in the trial that she spoke with Skinner immediately following the murders, when he stopped her from the calling the police and made many incriminating statements about the murders. Reed now claims that the detectives and police frightened her into testifying false information, more about her false information can be seen in the article Hank Skinner Death Penalty Case . . ., Politics Daily. Leaving out all of the DNA evidence and not exposing the lies of the star witness Reed in the first case is a fault of Skinner’s Court Appointed Attorney. Perhaps now, before the Supreme Court Skinner will have a more skilled criminal defense attorney, something that could save his life.
Tags: death penalty case evidence, death row, eyewitness, eyewitness testimony, Hank Skinner
Posted in Evidence | No Comments »
photo: Gone-Walkabout
The validity of eyewitness testimony has long been debated. How can someone’s memory be perfect during a tramatic event when they hardly remember normal everyday details? Yet another study has been performed by psychologists on the topic, this time to prove that fake video can easily change an eyewitness’s recollection of an event. Psychologists at the University of Warwick showed members of a gambling-type game doctored video of their opponent cheating during the game. Over half of the participants agreed to sign an official statement verifying the cheating even though the test subject did not witness any cheating in reality because it did not occur. This study continues to prove the theory that memories are often influenced by outside information, even if it is completely fictional. Fabricated evidence could lead an eyewitnesses to falsely accuse a defendant, and enter additional evidence into a criminal case that is only correlated to the case through a lie. Wired.com published an article on this study to show how serious photographic and video evidence can be to a criminal case.
Tags: eyewitness, eyewitness testimony, false testimony, testimony
Posted in Criminal Defense Misc, Evidence | No Comments »
photo: Ro / wererabbit
Australian Nicholas Gonzales was acquitted of rape. The sexual contact between Gonzales and his alleged victim was deemed consensual, partially because the jury agreed that it is extremely improbable that the female’s skin tight jeans could have been removed without her help and consent. The jury asked for more information about how the defendant had removed the jeans, and apparently it was not given. In South Korea and in Italy the same type of rape defense has also been used. In Seoul, South Korea a man convicted of raping a woman while she was wearing the same type of skinny jeans had his sentence overturned. In Italy however, courts upheld a rape conviction involving a victim wearing skinny jeans. This definitely shows that the conviction of sexual assault charges can hinge on a single detail in the case which is why having the best possible criminal defense lawyer is important.
Tags: Nicholas Gonzales, rape, sexual assault, skinny jeans
Posted in Crimes, Evidence | No Comments »
Utah Grandmother Bente Hansen was accused in 2006 of sexually abusing her grandchildren but was soon found not guilty at jury trial before Third District Court Judge Terry L. Christiansen. The lack of physical evidence aided in her acquittal. In cases where eyewitness accounts provide the strongest evidence they are usually seriously relied on by the jury. However, Hansen’s Utah criminal defense attorney Clayton Simms was able to effectively argue that the lack of physical evidence combined with eyewitness testimony which was only given after extensive therapy was not reason to convict Bente Hansen. Although Taylorsville police have described the related cases as some of the most troubling sex abuse and incest cases they’d ever seen their opinion did not prove true in the case of Bente Hansen. (“Grandma is not Guilty”, Salt Lake Tribune, Reavy, 9/8/06).
Tags: Bente Hansen, sex crimes, sexual abuse, Utah Grandmother sexual abuse
Posted in Evidence | No Comments »
photo: OldOnliner
On January 11, 2010 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers neighboring states like Arizona, Nevada and Idaho & has influence over what the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals (which governs Utah Federal caselaw) ruled on the case of the US v. Pinedo-Moreno. In this case evidence was used from a tracking device that was attached to the undercarrage of the Defendant/Appellant’s car. The court stated that the evidence was legally obtained and could be used even though the tracking device was attached to the car when it was parked in the owner’s driveway. This was largely due to the fact that there was no gate or sign barring entry to the driveway and the car was clearly visible from the street.
Since anyone could potentially be on the driveway, look under the car, and you could easily be followed in your vehicle, this car had no “reasonable expectation of privacy” at the location and time of the tracking attachment. This essentially means that police can use tracking devices on your vehicle very easily as the device does not constitute a search. Your vehicle could have a device attached without your knowing.
Your right to privacy concerning your motor-vehicle is continuing to dwindle as the United States Supreme Court has already held that when traveling on public roads a citizen has no reasonable expectation of privacy. Without defense lawyers working hard to protect a person’s privacy rights more and more intrusive evidence may be used in the court of law. Please hire the absolute best Utah criminal defense lawyer you can afford and protect your rights when being charged with a crime.
Tags: Evidence, privacy, right to privacy, tracking device
Posted in Constitutional Rights, Evidence | No Comments »
photo: fazen
The drug Capecitabine is used to treat many types of cancer, often to prevent the cancer from reoccurring. However, one of the drug’s side-effects is the constant inflammation of the hands and/or feet. This inflammation can cause the skin to peel, bleed and blister, which long-term can cause the user’s fingerprints to disappear. This is a serious problem. Many patients who have lost their fingerprints due to Capecitabine carry documents illustrating their identity and the reason for the loss of fingerprints. However, the loss of identifying factors could easily become a problem within the criminal justice system. There are other ways to cause swelling in one’s extremities which could lead to the peeling and blistering away of fingerprints. Fingerprints can be an essential piece of evidence for a crime. If you are concerned about your connection to fingerprints that may be involved with a crime in Salt Lake City you should contact the best Utah criminal attorney you can afford to advise you of your rights.
Tags: Fingerprints, Lost Evidence
Posted in Evidence, Legal Process | No Comments »
photo: ~BostonBill~
Since DNA testing was first introduced in the 1990s it has been used to free wrongly convicted prisoners, including some that were sentenced to death. Many of these innocents were incarcerated due to the testimony of an eyewitness. This demonstrates that many of these eyewitnesses provided faulty testimony without knowing it. There are many reasons why an eyewitness may strongly believe in the false information they are presenting. First, certain attributes such as psychological disorders and substance dependency make a person more likely to be involved in criminal activity and therefore more likely to be falsely connected to a crime. Next, jurors often believe more in a witness who claims to be very sure about their testimony even though their accuracy is nearly the same as the less confident. Third, the way in which the human memory works makes it very susceptible to false recall. The human mind does not work like a camera storing information and playing it back when needed. Instead, memories are reconstructed each time they are needed. Other pieces of information could unknowingly be combined into the memory, leading to false recall. Certain factors can reduce the accuracy of eyewitness identification such as:
- The way in which a lawyer questions the eyewitness
- Extreme stress
- Presence of a weapon at the crime scene
- Use of a disguise during the crime
- A racial disparity between the witness and the suspect
- Limited viewing time during identification
- Lack of distinctive characteristics to aid in identification
It would be very difficult to minimize such errors of testimony as the witness often feels very strongly about the accuracy of their recollection. One suggestion to remedy the situation is to allow an expert on eyewitness identification to testify in court to educate the jurors on the process in which an eyewitness recalls facts. In most U.S. jurisdictions such experts have not been allowed in the courtroom. However, in Utah, in December of 2009 in the case of the State of Utah v. Deon Lomax Clopten the Supreme Court of Utah overturned a murder conviction in which the trial judge refused to allow an expert on eyewitness identification to testify for the defense.
Tags: Evidence, eyewitness, eyewitness testimony
Posted in Evidence | No Comments »
