Anyone who doesn’t get the outcome that they expect during a criminal trial may naturally hope that they can appeal the verdict. Appeals are a little more complicated than that, however. An appeal can only happen if there is a clear reason why that case needs to be reviewed again. The reasons can be anything […]
You may remember the plight of Matthew Charles. Convicted for a crack offense, Charles was lucky enough to be released from prison in 2016, nearly a decade before his term was up. He had been saved — he thought — by a reduction in the federal sentencing guidelines’ mandatory sentences for crack offenses. Previously, crack […]
In 2015, Tyson Timbs pled guilty to heroin charges and sentenced to five years’ detention and probation. However, since his 2012 Land Rover was allegedly used to transport the drugs, the state of Indiana seized it as property that had been involved in crime. The vehicle was worth approximately $42,000 — four times the maximum […]
If you can’t afford to pay your Tennessee traffic ticket, the state may have threatened to take away your driver’s license — or it may already have done so. If so, you probably thought that license revocation was a strikingly counterproductive way of getting people to pay debts. After all, most people in Tennessee need […]
For most college students, their first party is a rite of passage. First-year students will walk through the door of a fraternity or campus house and smile in the excitement of their newfound freedom. But with newfound freedom comes responsibilities. Alcohol is a significant aspect of the college party scene, and students have to decide […]
A federal judge has ruled that Tennessee’s practice of revoking driver’s licenses merely because defendants can’t afford to pay court fines and fees. Since the law doesn’t provide an exception for the indigent, it violates people’s right to due process and equal protection under the law. The case does not apply to license suspensions or […]
