Reputation.Resources.Results

When the police stop a car due to a traffic violation, they can demand to see the identification of the driver and all passengers, right? Not necessarily. While drivers must produce identification, this is not necessarily so for passengers, as the Ninth Circuit recently held.

In Arizona, property owners can lose their houses, cars and other valuables when someone else uses the property to commit a crime. Does this mean you can lose a $50,000 car because, for example, a wayward relative drives it to go shoplifting? Before 2019, the answer was “yes.” Now, thanks to the Supreme Court, it is “maybe.”

Classes just started on Tuesday, three days ago, and already we have received calls from students and parents. Here’s a quick guide to common University of Arizona citations and arrests, especially for undergraduates, based on our many years experience representing students.

The so-called “Ambien defense”, while not new, has been in the headlines recently because Roseanne Barr blamed the drug for her racist tweets. The pharmaceutical company that makes Ambien responded by tweeting, “While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.

In Arizona, drug paraphernalia is a broad term used to describe a vast array of objects that can be used for growing, harvesting, manufacturing, testing, storing, containing, or concealing an illegal drug or used for injecting, or ingesting an illegal drug into the human body.

This blog will discuss how the career criminal designation affects drug offenders and a recent holding in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals case, U.S. v. Winstead, that could reduce the number of drug offenders who are sentenced as “career criminals.”

Federal sentencing guidelines use a system of “levels” to determine the range of jail time that offenders serve, based on the severity of the crime. A specific “base” level, from 1-43, is determined for each crime and that base level is the starting point for determining the minimum jail sentence an offender is likely to receive.

Over the past decade there had been a laudably bi-partisan effort to reduce the exploding prison population, particularly for drug offenders. But that era of leniency seems to have come to an abrupt halt.
Tough on crime statutes, passed by Congress, have long been on the books. However, in the recent past, Federal Prosecutors, using some discretion, occasionally side-stepped such harsh laws, particularly during the Obama years.

University of Arizona students and parents, often out-of-state, call us with urgent questions. Far too often a student has been caught in one of the dorms, typically Coronado,smoking marijuana, or lately an extract commonly known as “wax” (Butane Hash Oil). Eighteen years old, with no prior criminal record, the student is summarily booked into Pima County Jail, where he spends the night. Here’s five things you should know.

As a result of U.S Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recent announcement, about renewed enforcement focus concerning federal marijuana laws, despite state legalization, Arizona’s Medical Marijuana Laws have been back in the news. Here’s a recap of current thinking and recent legal developments.