http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current Newsen-us2013-06-18T16:38:08.265625-05:00http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=23126/18/2013 12:00:00 AMA mentally disabled woman and her child were held in an Ohio apartment for two years, forced to perform manual labor and threatened with dogs and snakes to keep them compliant, federal authorities said Tuesday. The people accused of holding the woman and child captive in the Ashland, Ohio, apartment collected the woman's government benefits and beat her in order to get painkillers for themselves, federal prosecutors announced.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=23096/14/2013 12:00:00 AMCHICAGO (AP) — Several dozen members of a Chicago street gang who are implicated in drug trafficking and murder have been charged under Illinois' new racketeering law, authorities announced Thursday.  Racketeering and conspiracy charges were filed against 23 defendants who are primarily top leaders and members of the Black Souls gang, Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez said.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=23106/14/2013 12:00:00 AMLAS VEGAS -- The Clark County District Attorney's animal cruelty campaign launched Thursday has a strong message: Hurt your pets and pay the price.  The campaign was launched a day after a Berkeley law student pleaded guilty to a felony charge for beheading a bird at the Flamingo resort on the Las Vegas Strip.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=23116/14/2013 12:00:00 AMNew City – The recently-released report for the Rockland County District Attorney’s Office’s 2012 year revealed the office oversaw significantly higher conviction rates over the course of last year, among other figures.  The conviction rate was announced to be 95.5 percent, with 574 convictions in Rockland County Court creating a slight 0.87 percent increase in conviction numbers overall.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=23066/13/2013 12:00:00 AMIn a clear escalation of the war on the heroin trade and the growing epidemic of overdoses, authorities on Wednesday charged two Bergen County men with causing the “drug-induced death” of an Emerson woman by supplying her with the drugs that led to a fatal overdose.  The decision by Bergen County prosecutors signals a move to go after small-time dealers, using a decades-old law that equates suppliers with killers if the drugs that they placed on the street end up causing a user’s death.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=23076/13/2013 12:00:00 AMTop state and city law enforcement officials on Thursday will announce an expansive investigation into the failure of Apple and other smartphone manufacturers to adopt measures that may limit a wave of thefts targeting their products, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman told The Huffington Post.  The coalition includes attorneys general from six states -- New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Delaware, Minnesota and Hawaii -- and district attorneys and high-level police officials from eight major cities, including New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Boston, Schneiderman said.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=23086/13/2013 12:00:00 AMSlowly, and largely under the radar, a growing number of local law enforcement agencies across the country have moved into what had previously been the domain of the F.B.I. and state crime labs — amassing their own DNA databases of potential suspects, some collected with the donors’ knowledge, and some without it.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=23026/12/2013 12:00:00 AMLos Angeles County Dist. Atty.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=23046/12/2013 12:00:00 AMWASHINGTON -- Child prostitutes would be considered victims of abuse rather than juvenile offenders and be referred to child welfare officials under legislation in Congress aimed at extending care to them before they become ensnared in the criminal justice system.  "In much of the country today if a girl is found in the custody of a so-called pimp she is not considered to be a victim of abuse, and that's just wrong and defies common sense," Sen.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=23036/12/2013 12:00:00 AMA new five-strikes law on misdemeanors, meant to put a stop to career criminals, was passed by the New York State Senate on Monday.  The legislation creates a new crime of aggravated criminal conduct, which would land a felony on anyone who commits a misdemeanor while having committed four or more other misdemeanors in New York State within the previous five years.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=23006/11/2013 12:00:00 AMST. PAUL, Minnesota — A coalition of prosecutors, law officers, lawmakers and others is launching a statewide campaign to help identify and fight abuse of the elderly.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=23016/11/2013 12:00:00 AMSAN FRANCISCO — The top prosecutors in San Francisco and New York, seeking ways to curb thefts of mobile devices, said Monday they will reserve judgment of Apple’s new security feature designed to make it harder to reactivate a stolen iPhone.  San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman have been asking the leading wireless device makers to create a “kill switch” that would render stolen phones useless.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=22996/10/2013 12:00:00 AMAttorney General Kamala D. Harris announced this week that the California Department of Justice is developing a new data sharing platform for federal, state, regional and local agencies to access, analyze, and share criminal justice information.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=22976/10/2013 12:00:00 AMSioux City-based U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett on Friday became one of a handful of U.S.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=22986/10/2013 12:00:00 AMNEW YORK (Reuters) - Two New York-area prosecutors said on Thursday they would no longer consider unused condoms seized from suspected prostitutes and sex traffickers as evidence, saying the public health benefit of making condoms available trumped their value in the courtroom.  "We need to put public health above the very little value of using condoms for prosecuting prostitution and trafficking," said Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=22936/7/2013 12:00:00 AMColorado authorities have determined that 1,211 prisoners possibly have errors in their sentencing documents that reduced their prison sentences, state corrections officials say.That is 53 percent of the total recently reviewed in an audit. The review found that 1,060 cases, or 47 percent, are acceptable, according to a joint news release by the Colorado Department of Corrections and the Colorado Judicial Department.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=22946/7/2013 12:00:00 AMWhen Wichita Police Lt. Chris Bannister joined the Special Investigations Bureau in 2009, he started to see a trend in erratic behavior.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=22956/7/2013 12:00:00 AMHARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The Connecticut Supreme Court is scheduled to release a ruling on whether state judges can issue search warrants for email accounts maintained by out-of-state companies like Google.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=22926/5/2013 12:00:00 AMThe legislature took another step Tuesday toward wiping out a signature law that allows convicted killers to be spared the death penalty if they can show court decisions tainted by racial bias.  The 77-40 vote in the state House was largely along party lines, with one Democrat joining all Republicans to repeal the law called the Racial Justice Act.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=22916/5/2013 12:00:00 AMGRAND FORKS — For the first time, one of the University of North Dakota law school students fanning out to summer externships with judges, courts and other parts of the legal system will join a tribal court, at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.  Rachel Egstad, who has finished her first year at the law school, will assist in the prosecution of crimes at the reservation, which straddles the North Dakota-South Dakota border.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=22876/4/2013 12:00:00 AMOregon judges for nearly two decades have had the authority to order people to surrender their guns after they're served with domestic violence restraining orders.  But the orders have mostly languished.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=22896/4/2013 12:00:00 AMMississippi lawmakers have embarked on a controversial campaign to discourage older men from having sex with teenagers.  Starting in July, doctors and midwives in the state will be required by law to collect samples of umbilical cord blood from babies born to some girls under the age of 16.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=22886/4/2013 12:00:00 AMFor the first time, there has been a conviction in Prince George's County Circuit Court on the charge of participation in a criminal gang, officials said.  Wilfredo Rosales, 20, of Northeast D.C., was convicted late last week on the gang charge as well as a charge of retaliation for testimony, according to the Prince George's County state's attorney's office.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=22866/3/2013 12:00:00 AMBy a 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a Maryland law that allows police to collect DNA, without first getting a warrant, from persons who are arrested.http://www.apainc.org/default.aspx?act=newsletter.aspx&category=Current News&newsletterid=22856/3/2013 12:00:00 AMFor the first time in a decade, Passaic County prosecutors are pulling out a secret weapon in the war against drugs — a seldom-used state law born of the late-1980s crack explosion that equates a drug dealer with an outright killer.  "It's essentially a homicide statute — and the act of homicide is selling drugs," says Paterson attorney Peter L.