Tucson DUI & Criminal Defense Blog

In an important new split decision, State v. Sisco, the Arizona Court of Appeals held that odor of marijuana alone is not enough to support a search warrant.

Last week, in an important ruling, a divided panel of the 9th Circuit in United States v. Chan held that post-conviction relief  is available where an immigrant establishes that s/he entered a guilty plea, even decades earlier, on the strength of criminal defense attorney’s affirmative mis-advice about a broadened range of immigration consequences, not just deportation.

Arizona law contains the legal fiction that anyone driving an automobile within the state of Arizona (even on private property) has “consented” to having their blood drawn, if an officer has “reason to believe” the person is “above the legal limit” (.08 BAC). This is true for people who don’t know about the law and have never actually consented. This law allows the police to obtain blood without a warrant.

Introduction Phoenix, the beating heart of the desert– integral to its anatomy is a special closed circulatory system of arterial freeways: the antecubital 101 connecting the fingers of North Scottsdale with the armpit of South Mesa; the femoral 202 linking the valley foot at Queen Creek with its crown at Cave Creek; the 303, pavement […]

US Supreme Court case Navarette v. California, gives police more leeway to stop a driver solely on the basis anonymous tip of a single instance of bad driving, even where the police themselves follow a vehicle and see only good driving.

The guardians are similar to the dog “‘[i]n that it (the dog and analogously the guardians) distinguishes friendly from hostile looks by nothing other than by having learned the one and being ignorant of the other’” ( Plato—the Republic, 376b). Today, the police “canine partner,” a guardian on a leash, possesses, as the police would […]

In the last few months the United States Court of Appeals in San Fransisco has issued several decisions that are particularly helpful to us down here in Arizona. Today I want to talk about two of my favorites, which provide us with some fresh ammo in jury trials. Both involve specific issues which come up over and over in our DUI, domestic violence, and other criminal jury trials down here.

2014 was a year punctuated by populist and somewhat incendiary citizen outrage, justified or not, over police wielding of (what some see as unbridled) power, ignited by at least three nationally publicized deaths of unarmed young men of color, and their subsequent and expedient legal exonerations by Staten Island and St. Louis County Grand Juries. In short, in 2014, the police seemed to act with impunity and immunity. And the legal system seemed to protect them.

The State of our Police State These days, sensational and tragic videos of the police, endless loops on our national news feeds, seem to be becoming the proverbial, and unfortunately literal, smoking guns of 2014. At times stunning and gut-wrenching, these videos have fueled mass protests across the country, fomenting a resounding and national clarion […]

For those of you who are charged with crimes, many say that the single most important decision you will make is which criminal defense lawyer to hire. And it’s true: the choice of criminal defense lawyer can be critical to the outcome. Because there are thousands of criminal defense lawyers – 10% of all law school graduates will practice criminal law at some point.