The "right to a speedy trial" is grounded in the Sixth Amendment. But this amendment provides much more than a requirement that the government not unduly delay a criminal trial. Below we break down the protections that this important part of the Bill of Rights includes.
This post is the third in our series covering due process in criminal law actions. In the first two posts we addressed the concept of due process rights generally, and the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in particular. In this post we will examine the Fifth Amendment.
A form of white collar crime that most New Jersey residents have heard about and some have unfortunately become first-hand familiar with is the fraudulent investment scheme. This trap usually comes in the form of a purported investment opportunity that promises a return on investment that is the epitome of the saying, "Too good to be true." There are many types of fraudulent investment schemes, from supposed foreign royalty looking for someone to help them to deposit large sums of money to insider trading on the stock market.
Embezzlement is when a person in a position of trust misappropriates assets entrusted to him or her. The New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice does not specifically use the term embezzlement. Rather, embezzlement is defined as theft by failure to make required disposition of property received.
It does not take long to find examples of people being accused of trying to defraud the system of government-provided health care. Take, for example, the recent story of a doctor in Englewood, New Jersey who is being charged with health care fraud in connection with charges for office visits that never took place, or prescription refills billed as office visits. His case, which will be heard in a federal court in Newark, is not unusual.
This post continues our series examining the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution in connection to your rights to due process under federal and New Jersey law when you are accused of a crime. Thus far we have considered the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution; here, we will look at the Eighth Amendment.
For a few years until 2013, people who wanted to buy or sell drugs illegally on the Internet frequently found their way to a network known as the "Silk Road." The network, which has been referred to as a "darknet" because of its efforts to conceal the identities and the transactions of its users, came under intense scrutiny from federal government prosecutors who traced its activities across the country. Their efforts effectively degraded if not closed down the network, at least temporarily, and culminated with the recent conviction in federal court of its creator, Ross Ulbricht.
There have been stories in the news recently about how the government – at both the New Jersey and federal levels – has been using asset forfeiture as a means of funding law enforcement activities. While this may not come as a surprise in cases where criminal defendants have been convicted of crimes and the assets seized represented their ill-gotten gains, the reality is that sometimes people are having their property taken away from them without a warrant requirement or even being charged with anything.
At the federal level, the government can seize property using a variety of means. It can do so administratively; it can do so through the criminal justice system; and it can do so in civil court actions. Civil asset forfeitures can be particularly pernicious, with more than $4 billion of property assets seized nationally in one year alone, and more than $2 billion in cash being seized from individuals who were never charged with a crime.
Most alleged Internet crimes are based on some form of financial fraud or related to a sex or pornography charge or stalking. Hacking can cause many types of angst, embarrassment and inconvenience to its targets. But rarely do you hear of someone dying as a result of Internet hacking.
A development in criminal law in New Jersey and other states has been the implementation of statutes that effectively enhance the penalties of other crimes when the motivation of the criminal act involves animus toward the victim based on categories such as race, gender or sexual orientation. These statutes are generally known as "hate crime" laws.