Susan Brenner at
CYB3RCRIM3 submitted an interesting post on July 29 titled "Identity theft case fails due to coerced confession" about a case of identity theft that fell through after threats were made by a private investigator to force the confessor to complete community service. The prosecutor advised against the case based on grounds of coerced confession. The police department closed the case and reached a voluntary arrangement with the confessor, according to which he will ultimately have to…complete community service!
Anne Reed, at
Deliberations, wrote a great post on the peremptory strike on August 1. "There was a time when courts treated the peremptory strike like fans treat a football star; these days it's more like the guy who sweeps up the stadium after the game," she said. The post, titled "The peremptory strike as broom and dustpan," follows the trend of this vital tool of law practice falling out of favor with the courts.
The July 31 post by Eric Mueller of UNC Law School on
Is That Legal? is titled "Justice Department Tips Off Senator Stevens Before Searching His Home!" Professor Mueller, who also spent nearly nine years as a federal prosecutor, holds that tipping off the attorneys of an individual to be searched defeats the purpose of the search warrant.
On July 30, at the
Legal Profession Blog, Mike Frisch reported on an attorney who was suspended for 90 days by the Maryland Court of Appeals for failing to disclose, while applying for a position in a federal agency, that she was previously employed by her spouse's law office. Even though the attorney had disclosed the relationship in other documents, those documents were held to be unrelated to the actual hiring of the attorney.
Thanks, and see you all next week.
