My wife Susan Burke heads to the United Arab Emirates this weekend to depose Blackwater Founder Erik Prince as part of one of her civil lawsuits against him. As reported in yesterday’s New York Times, Susan has brought suit against Prince on behalf of former Blackwater employees accusing Prince of defrauding the government. Susan has already settled seven suits …
“Swaying while balancing” is one of four “clues” used by a police officer to detect intoxication during the One-Leg-Stand component of the Standardized Field Sobriety Test (SFST). The police officer would require only one other clue to mark the suspect down as having failed this component and arrive at the conclusion that there is a 65% (according to the …
For over 20 years, Detective Wynn conducted line-ups at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility (CFCF) in Philadelphia. The line-ups were carried out in a little triangular-shaped room just beyond the main reception area. You know the way it looks from T.V.: the ante-room, the glass, and then, on the wall behind where the suspects stand, the red lines demarcating height. The …
A couple of days ago I was contacted by a colleague here in town on a criminal case she had just taken on. My colleague set up her own firm right out of law school, and this is the first criminal matter she has ever handled. My colleague is smart and went to a good law school. She has …
The science behind the Intoxilyzer 5000EN and other breath test machines all sounds very impressive. The problem is that the machines are based on certain assumptions about the person being tested. If the assumptions are faulty, so are the results. One of the major assumptions used in breath testing is that there is a correlation of 1 to 2100 between …