In addition to maintaining this blog on its website, ETKS has long-maintained a separate blog entitled “New York Criminal Defense,” accessible at http://newyorkcriminaldefense.blogspot.com/.
Ethan Nadelmann examines the failure of the war on drugs
Here’s a provocative TED Talk, published today, by Ethan Nadelmann, former professor at Princeton University and founding executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, “the largest and most influential organization promoting drug policies grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights.” Mr. Nadelmann contends that the drug laws have more to do with the sublimation and control of disenfranchised groups of our society than the control of drug use and sale, contending, among other things, that...
read moreThe Second Circuit revisits the concept of curtilage for Fourth Amendment purposes
The recent Second Circuit decision in Harris v. O’Hare, 2014 WL 5471749 [2nd Cir. 2014], decided on October 30th, addresses and expands upon the concept of curtilage, a topic infrequently addressed in judicial opinions (common though it may be in dinner party and happy hour conversation). The Court’s examination of curtilage was important in Harris (and may be useful in other cases) because it delineates an area in which an individual enjoys an expectation...
read moreWhy Innocent People Plead Guilty
Roughly 10% of those defendants who were later exonerated by DNA evidence through the efforts of the Innocence Project pled guilty to a crime they did not commit. What would lead a person to do that? Hon. Jed S. Rakoff, United States District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York examines that question in the above-entitled thought-provoking article (found here) in the November 20, 2014 issue of the New York Review of...
read moreI Do Declare: Submission of Defendant’s Affidavits/Declarations in Support of Suppression Motions
by Bill Easton A defendant who files a suppression motion often faces a common dilemma in both state and federal court. Judges commonly insist on the submission of a defendant’s affidavit or declaration before granting an evidentiary hearing in many instances, especially in the context of claims rooted in the Fourth Amendment. In many of these cases, the judge is wrong, and defense counsel should litigate the necessity and content of the affidavit before...
read moreA Simple Way to Insure That Applications for Leave to Appeal Exhaust All Federal Constitutional Claims Raised in the Intermediate Appellate Court
Applications for leave to appeal to the New York Court of Appeals from a decision and order of an intermediate appellate court affirming a conviction often focus on the issue or issues which are most likely to appear worthy of the attention of the Court of Appeals. As that Court’s website explains, those are significant and yet unresolved issues, such as those in in which the law is not well settled, or involve...
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