By Michael Brodheim
A divided Ninth Circuit panel has held that police officers may lawfully detain the citizen occupants of a home during a probation compliance search.
Oscar Sanchez was incarcerated in state prison in 2003, when a spike in robberies in the Wilshire area of Los Angeles prompted the ...
By Michael Brodheim
The Eleventh Circuit has vacated the award of attorney’s fees where the prevailing party, a nine-year-old Alabama child who in 2003 was handcuffed and arrested by a deputy on school grounds, was awarded only $1.00 in nominal damages by a jury in a suit filed pursuant to ...
By Mike Brodheim
The California Court of Appeal has invalidated the determination of the Board of Parole Hearings ("Board") that Felicia Blakely is a mentally disordered offender ("MDO"), finding that her MDO evaluations and certification occurred after her parole release date, in contravention of the mandatory deadline established by statute. ...
By Michael Brodheim
A California Court of Appeal has held that there is a "special relationship" between jailer and prisoner, which gives rise to a duty of care to protect the prisoner from foreseeable harm and thus can support a state-law negligence claim. In so holding, California joins a virtually ...
By Mike Brodheim
The California Court of Appeal (First Appellate District, Div. 2) has overturned Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's reversal of the parole board's third grant of parole to Bennie Moses, some 30 years after he was sent to prison to serve a sentence of 17 years to life for second ...
By Michael Brodheim
The Ninth Circuit has held that California’s Proposition 115, known as the Crime Victims Justice Reform Act, does not violate a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against him.
Adopted by California voters in 1990, Prop. 115 added constitutional and statutory language to permit a ...
By Michael Brodheim
Finding that a "Three strikes" sentence of 28 years to life imprisonment was so grossly disproportionate to an "entirely passive, harmless, and technical violation of the registration law" that it violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and that the California Court of Appeal's ...
By Mike Brodheim
A divided Ninth Circuit panel has held that a courthouse holding cell is not an "institution" as defined by the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. § 2000cc et seq., and hence that a Muslim woman's rights were not violated when, while detained ...
By Mike Brodheim
The California Court of Appeal has held that, by failing to act during the 30-day discharge review period provided by statute, the Board of Parole Hearings (Board) lost jurisdiction to revoke the parole of a prisoner who had otherwise complied with the statutory conditions for discharge from ...
by Mike Brodheim
In one of his last official acts before leaving office in January 2011, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger exercised his right under the state constitution to grant clemency to Esteban Nuñez, the son of the governor’s friend, former State Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez. Schwarzenegger reduced Esteban’s sentence for ...
