Foremost, perhaps, they highlight the critical importance for any person accused of a felony crime to secure the assistance of an experienced felony defense attorney as early as possible in the process. The need to do so, as the following narrative clearly points out, can be imperative and life-changing.

When it isn’t, and when -- as seen in the instant case -- clear abuse encroaches into an investigation, the democratic system as well an individual’s liberty interests suffers.

What happened in New York is simply stated: Police brought in a man for questioning in the disappearance of his wife and, with successive teams of officers, questioned him nonstop for 49 hours. During the interrogation, he had only a sandwich to eat and was not allowed to sleep. He did not have legal counsel during this time.

The police ultimately charged him with murder. Only after that did he obtain an attorney.

The man subsequently confessed and offered information about the crime and where his wife’s body was, but police were unable to corroborate any of it.

The husband was convicted at trial and sentenced to a term of 25 years to life. He appealed on the ground that his confession should have been suppressed.

The New York Court of Appeal -- that state’s equivalent of the Colorado Supreme Court -- ruled earlier this month that, indeed, the confession was inadmissible at trial, and the court granted the man a new trial.

“The court made clear that abusive interrogation tactics … are utterly inconsistent with justice,” said one case commentator following the ruling.

Source: Thomson Reuters News & Insight, "Murder confession after 49-hour interrogation not admissible," Donald Wiessner, June 4, 2013

The man seeking information on a DEA informant is a Guatemalan national currently serving a nearly 20-year prison sentence in the United States on drug conspiracy charges. The information he seeks is pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that he submitted in 2011.

The DEA has fought hard to deny the information, which requests all the agency’s records pertaining to its use of the informant in criminal cases. The agency initially claimed an exemption based on its right to withhold classified information supplied by a confidential source.

The now-prisoner took the matter to court, arguing before a U.S. district court judge that the exemption was unavailable because the informant revealed his identity when testifying in open court in the man’s case.

The judge recently agreed with that, denying a Department of Justice request for a summary judgment in the case.

As noted in a recent news commentary on the matter, the government might still seek to withhold the documents by filing a so-called “Vaughn index,” under which it must state every document it seeks to withhold and explain why release would be unduly damaging.

Any person charged by the government with a federal crime faces the considerable resources that prosecutors and federal investigators can bring to bear. An experienced criminal defense attorney can help to level the playing field by advocating vigorously on a suspect’s behalf.

Source: Courthouse News Service, "DEA may have to share records on ex-informant," Ryan Abbott, June 11, 2013

Perhaps the central conclusion to be derived from the data released by the ACLU is that, notwithstanding a loosened attitude toward possession and use of the drug in many areas of the country (including, of course, in Colorado, which the New York Times specifically references for the state's recent legalization of marijuana for recreational use), not all persons are treated similarly when they are found to be in possession of pot.

In certain areas it’s even worse than that. The likelihood of arrest is eight times higher in some states, including Illinois and Minnesota.

“We found that in virtually every county in the country, police have wasted taxpayer money enforcing marijuana laws in a racially biased manner,” says the report’s lead author.

And, surprising to many people, the arrest rate for pot possession was higher during President Obama’s first three years of office than it was on average during the presidency of George W. Bush.

Researchers say that one reason why the racial disparity in the arrest rate exists in such marked fashion may be because public opinion on marijuana has outpaced the rate of change in police practices. Many departments are still pushing officers to meet numerical goals for arrests, and that is often easiest to do when, as noted by the New York Times, police “can concentrate on minority or poorer neighborhoods.”

Source: New York Times, "Blacks are singled out for marijuana arrests, federal data suggests," Ian Urbina, June 3, 2013

The crux of that disagreement can be readily seen in the subject matter of the Court's 5-4 ruling earlier this week in favor of allowing police departments to take DNA cheek swabs of persons arrested for "serious" offenses, such as felony crimes. Kennedy and four other justices say that the purpose for allowing them to do so is entirely legitimate and not a constitutional encroachment on personal freedom. Those justices liken DNA collection to fingerprinting, and say that, because it is "markedly more accurate," it will quickly let law enforcement agents know what type of person they are dealing with at the jail house. That is something "that officers should know when processing for detention," Kennedy wrote for the majority.

That is in fact how the suspect whose case was before the Court was arrested and convicted. He was arrested in Maryland on an assault charge, after which police took a DNA sample from him. They then matched that sample against unknown DNA to convict him of rape, an offense they were not initially looking at him for.

The federal government and a majority of the states already allow DNA to be collected at the arrest phase, and many other states are now expected to follow suit in the wake of the Court's ruling.

Source: Bloomberg, "Routine DNA testing after arrest upheld by top U.S. Court," Greg Stohr, June 3, 2013

The question before the Court is this: Can police officers arrest a criminal suspect in his or her home who is objecting to their entrance to the residence, remove that suspect and then search the home without a warrant based on permission to do so by another resident?

Although that situation occurred in California, it is quite obviously capable of repetition at residences in any state, including Colorado, with the Court being asked to consider warrantless entry in a broad context.

In response, the police arrested him and removed him from the home. They then asked the woman for permission to enter and search the residence, and she agreed. They found evidence that was subsequently used at trial to convict the man of robbery. He was also convicted on a charge of domestic violence.

A state appellate court upheld that conviction, ruling that a resident's authority to bar entry to a home in the absence of a police warrant extends only to cases where that resident is present in the home. In the suspect's case, the court stated, he lost the authority to object once he was removed.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case this autumn and issue its ruling next year.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle, "Search allowed by roommate to high court," Bob Egelko, May 21, 2013

And although that "lock 'em up" mentality still exists among some political and legislative factions, myriad factors have intervened over the years to dampen its appeal for an increasingly large number of Americans.

Notwithstanding more progressive attitudes that have been demonstrated in Colorado and other states, though, Matthews notes that the pendulum can easily enough swing back the other way, given a longstanding American dynamic marked by "tension between liberty and morality."

At the moment, though, a number of factors have coalesced that make much of the nation increasingly amenable to loosened laws and policies centered on pot. One of those is the simple fact that harsh drug laws ensnare hundreds of thousands of minor-level and non-violent marijuana offenders yearly, resulting in staggeringly high costs for the justice system. Then there is, of course, the dire consequences visited upon those people, in terms of incarceration, lost jobs, foregone future opportunities and so forth.

And then there is this huge elephant: Increasingly more groups, including the Organization of American States, believe that legalizing pot in the United States would deal a damaging blow to Latin American drug cartels, which in turn would lead to less violence beyond American borders and far fewer resources needed for investigatory and enforcement purposes domestically.

One estimate posits that legalizing pot domestically would cut out about one-third of the profits for Mexico's organized drug rings

Source: Time, "How America learned to stop worrying and love marijuana," Christopher Matthews, May 28, 2013

Their pretext for doing so was an improper driving move by the suspect's girlfriend, which was never disputed. The driver consented to a search of the vehicle, pursuant to which police found the drug.

The suspect was convicted at trial, but won a new trial following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that a warrantless installation of a GPS device on a vehicle constitutes a constitutional search under the Fourth Amendment.

He lost the second time around. His attorney appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, arguing that the lower-court judgment should be vacated because the drug evidence resulted only from the illegal installation of the tracking unit. Prosecutors argued that police officers had acted in good faith, believing their conduct was legal, and that a good-faith exclusion to the requirement for a warrant existed.

The suspect's attorney responded that such an argument, if it prevails, "would effectively render our Fourth Amendment protections meaningless."

The appellate court has not yet issued a ruling.

Source: The Blog of LegalTimes, "In Fourth Circuit, a spotlight on warrantless GPS tracking," May 24, 2013

Their special focus is centered closely on Medicaid fraud, which they say is rampant and fleecing taxpayers. One thing that has been called into question, though, concerning regulators' investigations, is the potential for innocent parties to be misidentified as fraudulent actors and to be penalized alongside legitimate wrongdoers.

"You want to make sure you are not running the good providers out," she recently said.

That outcome is exactly what might be happening in one case in that state, following a third-party audit of one clinic's medical records. Although Medicaid officials found nothing untoward in the clinic's billing practices, the independent auditors uncovered what they say are discrepancies.

The chief doctor of the practice, who has 12 physicians working with him, flatly denies that claim and says that it is tearing apart his practice's sterling reputation in the community and making it too expensive to work with Medicaid patients. He is both irate and crestfallen that his practice "has been lumped together with people who are actually, truly doing Medicaid fraud."

The doctor says that he doesn't want to discriminate against any patients, but audits and potential liabilities have forced his clinic to forgo providing services for Medicaid patients.

His attorney says that, "[T]here is no question that the services he rendered were effective, medically necessary and cost efficient." The attorney also says that the doctor being lumped together with bona-fide wrongdoers "is wrong."

Source: WECT-TV6, "Medicaid fraud crackdown: Doctor claims his innocence, stops seeing Medicaid patients," Ann McAdams, April 30, 2013

Federalism is indeed a valid and useful concept for its addressing of when and why a particular matter should fall under the legal purview of a state government, federal authorities, or sometimes both. It makes sense, for example, that most local issues are dealt with by municipal or state law, just as it is easily seen why matters involving the nation's military, taxation or foreign policy are largely the domain of the federal government.

Marijuana, though, continues to be a sticking point in the debate of "whose law governs." As we noted in a recent post, for example, and notwithstanding Colorado's law allowing for the use of medicinal marijuana, a state appellate court has endorsed the firing of a paralyzed man using prescribed pot. The court stated that, for such use to be legal, it must be permissible under federal as well as state law.

The problem: It hasn't been grown legally inside the United States for 60 years, and the national government doesn't distinguish hemp from marijuana. In fact, it is deemed illegal to grow it, and Loflin's act could be construed as a federal crime, despite Colorado's liberalized marijuana laws.

A number of states have laws on the books citing the difference between hemp and pot and allowing for planting of the former. That doesn't mean, though, that a visit to Loflin's farm by federal drug agents would be a big surprise.

Source: Daily Caller, "Colorado farmer plants country's first legal hemp crop in decades," Greg Campbell, May 14, 2013

In some instances, the intent to misuse that information for questionable and damaging reasons is clear. In others, though, hacking activities are arguably more about nuisance than clear criminal intent, or, as often turns out to be the case, carried out in amateurish fashion and focused on very limited aims.

The question some persons are asking is this: Should hacking offenses routinely be charged as serious white collar crimes under federal law?

That law, which was legislation passed by Congress in 1984 to respond to the rise of criminal acts related to computers, is now claimed by many critics to be outdated and often invoked in inappropriate circumstances.

The results can be notably harsh, with some defendants accused of low-level criminal activity -- such as obtaining an email list -- facing potential prison terms marked by decades.

What many close observers of the CFAA express special concern with is the potential for defendants in similar cases receiving highly disparate sentences. Federal appellate courts have offered up different interpretations of the Act, for example, and cited rationales for differentiated sentencing outcomes that are far from uniform.

A number of commentators are calling for better clarification in the law concerning what type of offenses should be prosecuted under it. They say that doing so is of high importance, given that the CFAA is nearly 30 years old and that technology has evolved considerably since it was enacted.

Source: ABA Journal, "Hacker's hell: Many want to narrow the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act," Stephanie Francis Ward, May 1, 2013

Given Colorado's status as a vanguard state in what might be termed progressive laws addressing pot use among state residents, many people across the country who follow marijuana legislation might be more than a bit surprised -- in fact, they might be confused outright -- by a recent state appeals court decision affecting one user of medical pot.

What the Colorado Court of Appeals determined in a 2-1 ruling issued late last month is that a paralyzed man entitled under state law to use medical marijuana outside work to help with his condition was justifiably fired from his job for testing positive for THC. The man had no performance-related issues at work.

The court's reasoning was centered on the interplay between state and federal law. The majority panel stated that, "For an activity to be lawful in Colorado, it must be permitted by, and not contrary to, both state and federal law." Pot use continues to be a federal offense.

The case would seem to leave the fate of Colorado's medical marijuana users -- estimated to number nearly 128,000 persons legally entitled under state law to use pot to help alleviate medical ailments -- uncertain and also have implications for workers who consume recreational marijuana while off the job.

One judge dissented in the case, saying that no case law existed as a guide to whether a state judge should consider federal law when construing state law.

Source: Naples Daily News, "Court says pot smokers can be fired, even in Colo.," Steven K. Paulson, April 25, 2013

The case before the Court came on appeal from a Jamaican citizen and resident of the state of Georgia who was granted legal immigrant status several years ago. The man was arrested by Georgia police officers for possession of marijuana that was discovered during a traffic stop.

Under Georgia law, the amount confiscated subjected the man to a felony offense and conviction, even though he was in possession of only 1.3 grams, barely enough to make two or three marijuana cigarettes. He was placed on probation.

Federal authorities noted the conviction and sought to deport the man under federal law providing that individuals convicted of an aggravated felony can be removed from the United States.

The Supreme Court dismissed that reasoning. The Court held that, regardless of the man's conviction being a felony offense under a state law, possession of a small amount of marijuana without any evidence that monetary gain was sought through an attempt to distribute is not a felony under federal law.

The Court's decision was a 7-2 majority ruling, with Justices Thomas and Alito dissenting.

Source: Thomson Reuters, "Justices say marijuana possession not a deportable offense," Lawrence Hurley, April 23, 2013

The latest flurry of activity surrounding marijuana use in Colorado came -- and went -- just last week, with a bill seeking to define for the third time a legal limit on drivers with THC (marijuana's principal active ingredient) being defeated in the state's Senate Judiciary Committee. Only a single member voted in favor of it.

That latter group strongly begs to differ. Medical marijuana lobbyists say that the latest legislation, which sought to stipulate that a prosecutor could infer impairment based on a blood draw indicating the presence of THC in a user at a level of five nanograms or above, was seriously flawed and unscientific. One advocate says that, unlike the case potentially with casual users, the stated limit "does not address those who use cannabis every day and will have high residual THC in their blood with no impairment."

Following the recent bill's defeat, new efforts quickly surfaced to tack it on to other bills yet to be considered. Pursuant to a dictate established in Amendment 64, state lawmakers must pass relevant legislation on the matter by May 8.

Source: Yahoo! News, "Colorado driving-while-stoned bill goes up in smoke once again," Greg Campbell, April 24, 2013