New Laws With the passage of The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, legislators have officially distinguished hemp from marijuana, making hemp an agricultural product instead of a controlled substance. From this will come a multitude of changes. Hemp farmers can now buy crop insurance. Banks will grant loans to hemp-related businesses, and credit card companies […]
A Turning Point For decades, experts in law enforcement, many of them active or former police officers, have pointed out the deficiencies of police strategy as it has come to be across the country. Bound up in a vicious cycle, most of these deficiencies both result from and exacerbate distrust between law enforcement agencies and […]
As the landscape of marijuana legalization changes, the many related laws evolve accordingly. An Oregon court recently ruled that the smell of marijuana smoke cannot be considered inherently offensive. It is in fact pleasing to some people, and therefore not grounds to pursue any complaints concerning the odor. This ruling came about concerning an Oregonian […]
A pattern has emerged: the use of statistics showing low ratios of criminal convictions to criminal reports to support criticism of the U.S. legal system. How, the implication goes, can we trust the law we live under when Department of Justice surveys indicate that only 22 out of 619 robbery reports end in felony convictions, […]
We realize there is a chance you were buried in a mudslide several weeks ago and have only now tunneled out into the light of day. First of all, if so, welcome back! Second, you have some catching-up to do with Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation, which we think makes apposite a review of the Supreme […]
As Chris Watts of Colorado awaits trial for the murder of his pregnant wife Shanann and their two young daughters, speculation abounds whether the case may end in capital punishment, though so far the prosecution neither confirms nor denies that it will seek that result. Colorado, rightly cautious about death sentences, has not carried one out […]
The Debate In 2015, expanding the application of previous similar laws, the Texas legislature passed a law to allow citizens to take concealed guns into buildings on public college campuses. Two years later several professors from the University of Texas at Austin sued, calling the law unconstitutional. When their case was dismissed they appealed, and […]
Colorado law gives judges the authority to hide information about court cases from the public, information ranging from the least important details to the very fact of the cases’ existence. Judges use this power either by a procedure called sealing, which has strict limits set out in state codes, or by orders of suppression, which […]
With the passage of Colorado Amendment 64 in 2012, a new era of marijuana tolerance swept the state. As of January 1st, 2014, dispensaries which had gained the proper licensing from the state opened and began marijuana sales to the public. The result has been a steadily-increasing industry, with weed sales, including edibles, medicinal marijuana, […]
Paul Manafort is President Trump’s former campaign chairman who is currently the defendant in two upcoming trials on money laundering and bank fraud. On Friday, a judge ordered he spend the rest of his pretrial period in jail. The accusation which led to this pretrial charge is witness tampering. The Judge determined that since there is no […]