An Indiana man with an opioid addiction was arrested several years back for selling a small amount of heroin to undercover cops. He was convicted on that charge and paid a price.
Specifically, he served a years’-long home detention and probation period. He also paid fees and court costs, as well as the money required to fund the police probe against him.
Police put their lives on the line to protect the public. In order to perform their duties, they receive broad freedom to respond to threats with reasonable force. But that use of force isn’t unlimited.
When police use too much force or otherwise abuse their powers, their arrests may be illegal. And as the recent story of three Muncie officers charged with using excessive force illustrates, if the arrests were illegal, prosecutors may not be able to move forward with charges.
Whenever families get stuck with each other for an increased amount of time, reports of domestic violence increase. They rise sharply every year over the holidays, and they’ve risen sharply recently as more couples have found themselves trapped together.
Stay at home orders have placed a great deal of strain on relationships across the United States. Couples in Indiana have suffered as much as anyone. In many cases, their strain has erupted into threats or violence. In others, the strain may lead to heated arguments and calls to the police, and people may find themselves facing charges even if they never committed a crime.
In Indiana, as throughout the United States, if the government charges you with a crime, you have the right to a jury trial. The jurors are supposed to be “impartial,” but what does that mean? How can you guarantee the jurors are impartial?
The truth is that you can’t guarantee an impartial jury. This was recently made clear by the news of an Indiana juror who lied about her experience with domestic violence. But your attorney can work toward selecting a better and more impartial jury.
Indiana is generally a friendly state, but not when it comes to the enforcement of drunk driving penalties.
In fact, the criminal and related sanctions meted out to a drunk driver are both multiple and onerous. A convicted offender is likely to remember them for a lifetime.
If you get arrested, you might know that anything you say can be used against you in court. But what does that mean? Are there limits to what the prosecution can use? Are there any times you can’t stay silent? Are there questions you must answer if the police ask them?
There’s more to your Miranda rights than you might have learned from watching cop shows on the television. Here are six things you might not already know.
The realm of violent crime offenses is vast and varied. It ranges broadly from murder, robbery and arson to burglary, battery and a host of other charges.
Domestic violence is one entrant in the violent crime universe that has garnered progressively more attention from Indiana criminal law authorities in recent years. Advocacy groups are notably proactive in their calling out of the problem and safety-focused efforts, and police officers routinely make arrests when called to homes in abuse cases. Notably, too, prosecutors act with dispatch and severity in their handling of such matters.
A notable fact concerning a sex-crime accusation is that it can have devastating consequences for an alleged offender, even absent a subsequent conviction.
Sex crimes come with a stigma - sometimes permanent - for any Indiana resident accused of wrongful behavior. The public collectively has a long memory, and even an unfounded targeting can prove materially damaging.
It’s more than a hunch, but doesn’t have to be an absolute certainty.
Somewhere within the boundaries of those extremes resides so-called “probable cause,” which is a key legal concept. In fact, one in-depth article overview of probable cause stresses that it “is perhaps one of the most important concepts when it comes to criminal law.”
Many people in Indianapolis and elsewhere across Indiana might not immediately think of alleged wrongdoing in the white collar realm when they consider major categories in the criminal law universe. Other types of crime - sexual assaults, drunk driving and drug offenses, for example - often come to mind far more readily.
Here's a fact, though: Investigatory efforts and resulting convictions concerning white collar criminal activity have actually spiked dramatically in recent years.
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