The year is 1966 and the place is Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County, Maryland. The student body is 95% or more White, as is the faculty and administrative staff. There are no school resource officers or police presence of any kind in the school. I am in a...
Having a Maryland criminal record may haunt you, and this holds true even if your record contains information about an offense you received a conviction for as a juvenile. Depending on the type of conviction you received, you may find that it follows you for years....
Appealing a criminal conviction is not an automatic right. Many people do not understand how appeals work and that your case must qualify. According to the District of Columbia Courts, you do have the right to request an appeal in any situation. However, the court...
DNA evidence plays a significant role in the criminal justice system. In some cases, it can convict a person of a crime. In others, it establishes the innocence of a person who has spent years of their life in prison. Because it is a deciding factor in so many...
In Maryland, all things “delinquency” flow through the Department of Juvenile Services. If you are a parent seeking a peace order in a juvenile case, you would go there. If you are a police officer who has arrested a juvenile, you know to go there. If you are an...
White collar crimes often slide under the radar when people discuss life-ruining convictions. But a conviction for one of these crimes can and often does have the power to ruin lives. The FBI states that federal law enforcement agencies investigate all crimes brought...
Whether you hear it on television or your attorney says the term, the word discovery gets used frequently in criminal cases. When preparing for trial, attorneys from both sides engage in the process of discovery. Discovery is the exchanging of legal information...
In Maryland, any child under the age of 18 who does something that would be a crime if committed by an adult has thereby committed a “delinquent act” and is subject to the jurisdiction of the Juvenile Court. Some children, as you might expect, commit serious...
After investigators obtain a wide-variety of evidence from a crime scene, they then perform a myriad of tests to determine whether it links the suspect to the crime. Not all of the tests performed, however, are proven to be scientifically valid. In fact, some methods...
For those dealing with criminal charges, the hope is that (should their cases result in convictions) their challenges might end when they complete the punitive actions a judge assigns to them. However, that is often not the case. Indeed, they may begin to encounter an...