Recent headlines on illegal immigration claim that since Phoenix dropped its sanctuary city status in 2008, the crime rate in the city has dropped significantly. We choose 2008 because that was the year SB 1070, the law that makes it a crime in Arizona to be an...
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Michael Floyd DUI Probation Violation
On December 12, 2016, Michael Floyd was charged with DUI after being found asleep or passed out in his car in Scottsdale. At the time, he was a wide receiver for the Arizona Cardinals. We reported on the arrest in our blog back in March. At that point, Floyd had been...
“Neighborhood Profiling” Illegal – AZ Supreme Court
When the police arrived at a Phoenix apartment complex back in 2012, they were looking for an individual who had an outstanding federal warrant, and who, they heard, was seen selling drugs in the area. At the complex, the police didn’t find the person they were...
Arizona DOC Prisoner Mail Review Policy Illegal
The policy of the Arizona Department of Corrections is to check to make sure that “contraband” is not being sent out into the world by prison inmates. The problem is that the policy and practice of the DOC included a page-by-page review of the content of outgoing...
Marijuana and Prisons in the United States
We’ve reported in the past about the enormous number of people incarcerated in the United States. In fact, the U.S. has by far the highest percentage of prison and jail inmates in the world. You may have heard lots of purported reasons for this fact. Some say we’re...
Maricopa County’s “Tent City” Shutting Down
No more pink underwear for prisoners Back in 1993, when former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio was first elected, his campaign stressed a “tough on crime” attitude. Somehow, that campaign stance morphed into Maricopa County’s “Tent City.” This is a county jail...
Court Says No to College Ban on Medical Marijuana
History of Attempts to Legalize Marijuana for Medical Use in Arizona Medical marijuana has had a rather tortured history in Arizona. When Proposition 203 was finally passed by the voters in 2010, it was actually the fourth time that the issue was on the ballot. Here...
Road Rage Leads to Aggravated Assault Charge
According to Phoenix police, a woman has admitted that she intentionally rammed her car into a vehicle she says cut her off. The report did not indicate that anyone was injured in the collision. Nevertheless, the woman has been charged with aggravated assault, a...
“Super Extreme DUI” Leads to Jail Time for Michael Floyd
In Arizona, not all drunk driving charges are the same. Take the case of former Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Michael Floyd. He was arrested in December for DUI after he fell asleep behind the wheel of his car. It wasn’t his first DUI charge. Back in 2011, while...
Free Speech Survives in Arizona . . . for now!
“Organize a Protest, Lose your Home” Bill May be Dead There are some Republicans in the Arizona legislature who are . . . well . . . let’s just say they are not students of the United States Constitution. In an effort to drive out and punish dissenters – that’s anyone...
“No Bail” for Sex Crimes Struck Down by AZ Supreme Court
The Arizona Supreme Court has declared certain provision of the state constitution invalid. Those provisions were inserted back in 2002, when voters in Arizona approved an amendment changing the circumstances in which a criminal defendant may be released on bail. The...
Arizona DUI News – Senate Bill 1054
Implied Consent The law in many states provides that under certain circumstances, a driver is deemed to have consented to have a blood, breath or urine test to determine the presence of alcohol or drugs in the driver’s system. It’s called “implied consent.” It is...
Homicidal Sleepwalking Defense
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the killing of Yarmila Falater by her husband, Scott Falater. Yarmila was stabbed 44 times, and then drowned in the couple’s backyard swimming pool in a Phoenix suburb. Scott, a devout Mormon, said he had a history of...
Felony Murder in Arizona – Time for a Change
Murder conjures up bad, bad acts. But felony murder – sounds even worse, doesn’t it? Well, words can be deceiving, and this is a case where they sound a lot worse than they are in most cases. Killing another human being is certainly one of the worst things a person...
Yahoo! Data Breach and Identity Theft
The theft of data by hackers has become commonplace. And the magnitude of some of these security breaches is astounding. The most recent example came to light last week, when Yahoo announced that back in 2013, hackers stole data of more than one billion users. The...