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Virtual Reality Creating Jury Reality
FEATURED
January 7, 2025
Virtual Reality Creating Jury Reality
By: James Trusty
A Florida Judge may have unwittingly ushered in a new age of criminal justice, where slickly made virtual reality (“VR”) presentations turn judges and jurors into witnesses, and VR headsets provide subjective “testimony” in a powerful and difficult to challenge manner. Broward County Judge Andrew Siegel agreed to don a virtual reality headset in a preliminary proceeding[1] where the defendant was accused of aggravated assault. Miguel Albisu, the defendant, was accused of waving a gun at wedding guests and he claims self-defense. The defense hired an artist to create a “defendant’s perspective,” and the result is a historical first—the judge took in a defense expert’s testimony about self-defense that included a guided tour of the reality contained on a VR…
How Thick is the Blanket? – Preemptive Pardons as a Presidential Power
December 6, 2024
How Thick is the Blanket? – Preemptive Pardons as a Presidential Power
By: James Trusty
As the presiding judge scolded Hunter Biden’s attorneys this week, “The Constitution provides the President with broad authority to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, U.S. Const. art. II, § 2, cl. 1, but nowhere does the Constitution give the President the authority to rewrite history.”[1] But what exactly is that history he claims is being re-written? Judge Scarsi was challenging…
Supremely Improbable
July 30, 2024
Supremely Improbable
By: James Trusty
President Biden’s pronounced objectives for Supreme Court “reform” are improbable, politically lifeless under a particularly lame duck presidency, and motivated by transparently November-driven calculations. But even if the proposed changes are doomed from the start, they push public discourse on a couple of issues that are red meat for the democrats. The stated reforms are superficially simple ones: 1) to “clarify” that “there is no…
Officer Misconduct Reform Issues Highlighted in Brooklyn District Attorney’s Dismissal of Nearly 400 Convictions
September 20, 2022
Officer Misconduct Reform Issues Highlighted in Brooklyn District Attorney’s Dismissal of Nearly 400 Convictions
By: Jake Gray
On September 7, 2022, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office announced its request to vacate nearly 400 convictions, dating back to 1999, that were founded on testimony provided by officers who were later found guilty of crimes committed while on duty. Among the 13 officers’ crimes are murder, planting drugs, taking sex bribes, civil liberties violations, and perjury—crimes that called “into question the integrity of every…
More than a Mantra: Pitfalls of Excluding Time under Speedy Trial Analysis
July 1, 2022
More than a Mantra: Pitfalls of Excluding Time under Speedy Trial Analysis
By: James Trusty
This week the Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stinging reminder about the need for precision in the case of U.S. v. Pikus, No. 20-3080 (2d Cir. 2022). Aleksander Pikus was one of four defendants charged with money laundering conspiracy and related offenses for bilking Medicare and Medicaid through false billings. The scheme featured unnecessary ambulance rides to a Brooklyn medical clinic apparently run…
Michigan’s High Profile Boomerang
April 21, 2022
Michigan’s High Profile Boomerang
By: James Trusty
About one month before the 2020 election, the Department of Justice proudly announced their disruption of a scheme to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Six men were arrested and referred to as “violent extremists.” Gov. Whitmer’s surrogates indicated that the blame was not fully on the gnarly bearded men whose pictures dominated newscasts around the country, but on Donald Trump, who had whipped up crowds…
Modern Day Ceasar Faces Brutal End
August 23, 2021
Modern Day Ceasar Faces Brutal End
By: James Trusty
Last week’s Second Circuit Court of Appeals opinion in U.S. v. Sinmayah Ceasar, 2021 WL 3640387 (2nd Cir. Aug. 18, 2021) provides some insight into the challenging area of defining a “reasonable” sentence and ascertaining the circumstances when appellate courts might overturn a judge’s sentencing decision for being “unreasonably” lenient. The case against Ceasar was not built in a day. The government obtained evidence that…
Time to Face the (Hidden) Music
August 2, 2021
Time to Face the (Hidden) Music
By: James Trusty
A Texas man named Guy Reffitt has found himself at the edge of the new legal frontier, a place where privacy rights and encrypted technology face aggressive prosecutors willing to push for their strongest criminal case. This Guy did not bring a lot of sympathy to the legal battle—he is alleged to have traveled from Wylie, Texas to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, with…
