ALHS Legal Studies

"The father of a victim of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre has won a defamation lawsuit against the authors of a book that claimed the shooting never happened - the latest victory for victims' relatives who have been taking a more aggressive stance against conspiracy theorists."

"The New York police officer accused of using a banned chokehold in the 2014 death of Eric Garner administered "a lethal dose of prohibited force" for no reason, as Garner posed no danger, a lawyer said Monday in a disciplinary hearing."

"Researchers from Florida Atlantic University, Arizona State University, and the University of Texas at El Paso, found that despite increases in violent crimes, the hazards of policing has dramatically declined since 1970 with a 75 percent drop in police officer line-of-duty deaths. The study also refutes the theory of "war on cops," following the Ferguson effect and Michael Brown's death in August 2014, and finds no evidence to support those claims. "

"The fate of Curtis Flowers may well hinge on how the U.S. Supreme Court views the removal of a handful of African-Americans from jury selection at his 2010 trial. The key issue is whether the prosecutor in the case, Doug Evans, violated Flowers' rights by dismissing black jurors because of their race, which is unconstitutional. IN THE DARK   Episode 12: Before the Court"

"The scope of the warrant was so expansive in time and geography that it had the potential to gather data on tens of thousands of Minnesotans. The technique has caught the attention of civil liberties lawyers who worry such warrants - deployed increasingly by police in the Twin Cities and around the country - are a digital dragnet ripe for abuse, and that judges may not realize the technical details or broad scope of the searches they're authorizing."

"Arizona authorities are investigating the rape of a female patient in a vegetative state in a nursing facility. The woman stunned workers when she went into labor on Saturday because they didn't even know she was pregnant."

"A House vote could come later this week. The bill reforms mandatory minimums and "three strikes" laws, and grants early release to certain inmates who complete anti-recidivism training."