Tucson DUI & Criminal Defense Blog

On September 26th, 2015 U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee granted final approval of the settlement in Franco v. Holder, paving the way for previously deported immigrants with severe mental disabilities to request to reopen their cases in Immigration Court, and if approved return to the United States.

In a notable recent decision on prosecutorial misconduct, United States v. Citali-Flores, 14-50027, 2015 WL 5569098 (9th Cir. Sept. 23, 2015), the Ninth Circuit held error, albeit harmless, where the prosecutor, in closing argument, misstated evidence.

It is hard to think of a more significant power in the machinery of our democracy that is exercised more secretly.

As Matt Taibbi noted in his New York Times Bestseller, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap (2014), oddly, not a single high level individual Wall Street employee was ever prosecuted and jailed for the large-scale corporate malfeasance that led to the real estate and market implosions of 2008.

In 1996, as part of America’s “War on Drugs,” Congress enacted a now-controversial measure, which strips both food stamps and welfare cash assistance (known as “Temporary Assistance to Needy Families” or “TANF”) from anyone convicted of any state or federal drug-related felony. See 21 U.S.C. § 862a (a).

Governor Jerry Brown signed a triptych of immigration bills, the first of which removed the word “alien” from California’s legal code. The second bill allows immigrant high school students to serve as election poll workers.

In an important ruling, a unanimous Ninth Circuit panel in United States v. Rodriguez-Vega, No. 13-56415 (8-14-15), held that where deportation of an immigrant is a “virtual certainty” as a consequence of a guilty plea, the defense attorney has an affirmative duty to properly advise. It is not enough to say it is a “possibility” under those circumstances.

California’s Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill into law Tuesday that prohibits secretive grand juries from determining cases where law enforcement uses “excessive” or “deadly force.”

In a notable unanimous opinion Arizona Court of Appeals vacated a voter fraud conviction. State v Hannah. There, a Mohave County Arizona Grand Jury indicted Hannah for one count of illegal voting in violation of A.R.S. § 16-1061V(2) alleging that she “voted in the November 2, 2010 general election in both Mohave County Arizona and Adams County Colorado”.

At oral argument Friday, July 24 in Pasadena, Ninth Circuit Judge Kim Wardlaw admonished a United States Department of Justice attorney for citing a recent Los Angeles Times article entitled, Sex offender accused of assaulting teen was in U.S. illegally.