More campaign and lobbyist money was spent in 2012 than in any other election year in American history. Whether it was the estimated 3 billion dollars spent on the presidential race, or the 90 million dollars spend on expanding Maryland’s gambling laws, this Election Day will not soon be forgotten.…
The synthetic marijuana controversy is back in the news again in Maryland. Clashes between vendors and members of the community where the fake drug is being sold continue to butt heads, and Frederick is at the center of this latest dispute. A cigar store that also sells beer and wine…
Federal probation and parole in Maryland got a whole lot easier for some defendants from 2009 to 2010. Well, at least it was for the dozens of defendants who had been convicted of federal crimes, or recently released from federal custody and completed their mandatory drug testing requirements at the…
The Anne Arundel County Police Department has released its final statistics about a recent DUI checkpoint. The results are consistent with another Maryland DUI checkpoint on the Eastern Shore that was the subject of a previous blog entry, and provide further evidence supporting the conclusion that DUI checkpoints are not…
All Maryland police officers receive some sort of training in constitutional laws relating to search, seizure, and arrest. Constitutional law is by no stretch of the imagination the focus of any police academy’s training program. There is just not enough time and too little resources to put every potential police…
Compulsory or mandatory blood tests during the course of a DUI investigation have been a hotly debated legal topic over the last decade. The debate over whether cops should legally be able to force a DUI suspect to submit to a blood draw to measure blood alcohol level has been…
A variety of new Maryland laws are set to go into effect on Monday, October 1st. Many of these new Maryland laws are part to the criminal justice system, most notably the Maryland marijuana possession law. After years of lobbying by marijuana legalization groups, the Maryland state legislature finally voted…
Snickerdoodle cookies might not have the value of the crown jewels in London, or the gold in Fort Knox, but it is certainly easier to attempt a cookie theft. Or at least that is what two Maryland teenagers had thought before attempting the not so glamorous heist. Baltimore County police…
There are not many civil law topics worthy of a post on a criminal law blog, but the revival of the contributory negligence debate is one topic that deserves an exception. The Maryland civil justice system is one of four states plus Washington D.C. that uses the contributory negligence standard…
Each year during the summer, the Maryland State Police releases its uniform crime report for the state of Maryland. The crime report uses data collected from every police jurisdiction in all 24 Maryland counties, but only factors in reported crimes in the report. The Maryland State Police defines reported crimes…