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A high profile investigation into the killing of a 6-year-old in Saginaw, Texas, highlights the increasing complexity of evidence gathering in the modern era. The death of Alanna Gallagher has shocked a Texas community. Her body was found earlier this month in the middle of a Saginaw road, naked and wrapped in a tarp. The…
The arrest of a man described by the authorities as a member of the Bloods gang in Galveston, Texas, has once again highlighted the issue of organized crime in the state. According to the Houston Chronicle, Christopher Mason, 38, was described as a “career violent offender” and a gang member. He was arrested on the…
Last Friday we considered the question, Is technology driving jurisprudence? Today we’ll discuss some of these technologies. Perhaps the first such “new” technology that will confront the Court is the pervasive use of surveillance cameras. Such cameras, with ever increasing frequency, are being installed on office buildings, banks, stores, and other private establishments. Because private…
On January 23rd 2012 the Supreme Court decided a seminal case concerning the relationship to new technologies and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. In United States v. Jones, __ U.S. ___ (2012), the Supreme Court decided whether the warrantless installation of a global positioning system device on the underside of a suspect’s car in order to track…
Texas, with its multi-million dollar oil and gas industry, sees a number of high profile white collar crime investigations every year. According to the U.S Department of Justice, four executives from Provident Royalties, Inc. have been sentenced in connection with a massive oil and gas investment fraud scheme in the Eastern District of Texas. The…
This was the question recently put to members of the Dallas criminal defense bar. When his peers were asked, Clint Broden was selected in four categories as the lawyer other criminal defense lawyers would go to if their son or daughter needed criminal representation. The categories were: If my son/daughter were charged with a FELONY…
Medicaid and Medicare fraud has made headlines recently after Texas Governor Rick Perry signed a series of bills to step up state enforcement and investigations into bad practices in the healthcare field. The legislation is also intended to set up procedural safeguards for health providers accused of wrongdoing. The new laws broaden the definition of…
In Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928), the Court found the Fourth Amendment did not apply to wiretaps because “[t]he taps from house lines were made in the streets near the houses,” rather than in the houses themselves, employing a strict property bases Fourth Amendment analysis. Likewise, in Goldman v. United States, 316…
Yesterday I discussed whether the massive data mining efforts of the U.S. government presaged a Big Brother like invasion of privacy. Today I’ll consider the implications of government efforts to develop massive DNA databanks in order to solve crimes. In 2003 a man broke into a woman’s home in Maryland and raped her at gunpoint….
Based on the recent revelations published in the Guardian concerning the U.S. Government’s massive data collection efforts as part of its “war on terror,” many Americans are beginning to wonder if the government is not in fact engaging in a “war on privacy.” On the one hand some people are decrying the current state of…