Feb 24, 2013 | Case Comments, Number 1, Print Edition, Volume 46
The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and article I, section 10 of the Minnesota Constitution protect an individual’s privacy right from an unreasonable search or seizure. However, courts have upheld the constitutionality of some searches when an individual’s...
Feb 24, 2013 | Case Comments, Number 1, Print Edition, Volume 46
The United States Supreme Court famously held in Miranda v. Arizona that the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination granted a series of required safeguards, and outlined a way a suspect can invoke his rights. In 2010, the Court revisited this issue in...
Feb 24, 2013 | Notes, Number 1, Print Edition, Volume 46
Eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of mistaken convictions in the United States. Presently, more than 300 people have been exonerated through postconviction DNA evidence. The average sentence served in these cases, at the time of exoneration, was 13.6...
Feb 24, 2013 | Case Comments, Number 1, Print Edition, Volume 46
In criminal cases, restitution for victims is typically limited to the losses that the defendant caused in the commission of the crime.1 Title 18, section 2259 of the United States Code requires courts to order restitution for victims of sexual crimes against children...
Feb 24, 2013 | Notes, Number 1, Print Edition, Volume 46
Under early common law, many states punished assisted suicide as murder. In 1994, however, the Supreme Court of Michigan drew a legal distinction between the concepts of murder and assisted suicide. Despite this distinction, forty-seven states still prohibit...
Feb 24, 2013 | Notes, Number 1, Print Edition, Volume 46
The development of digital technology has created a unique set of problems for courts attempting to determine whether certain practices pertaining to search and seizure of digital forensic evidence are violative of the Fourth Amendment. The significant inherent...