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 […]
The holiday season is here, and you may be visiting friends or family here in the Nashville area. You could attend plenty of parties and holiday gatherings with those you love, which means you may travel between locations and/or to and from a hotel. During those travels, you could end up gaining the attention of […]
In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama that sentencing juvenile offenders to life in prison without the possibility of parole violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments. The court had previously ruled that the death penalty is unconstitutional when applied to juvenile defendants. “Mandatory life without parole for a juvenile […]
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 […]
In Tennessee as in many states, people can be convicted of DUI not because they were actually driving, but because they were in physical control of a motor vehicle. This can potentially lead to some troubling cases. For example, suppose an intoxicated person is found asleep in their car. They may very well have been […]
Calvin Bryant was incarcerated in 2008 for selling ecstasy out of his apartment. The Nashville man received a 17-year sentence, which is sentence typically given to those convicted of second-degree murder or rape. It was Bryant’s first criminal charge. However, since Bryant lived within 1,000 feet of a school, that bumped up the potential punishment for […]
