New Mexico Law Enforcement Personal Cell Phone Records

 Now, support of the judge’s action recently by the New Mexico Court of Appeals potentially raises a question for every officer in the country: to what extent are records from your personal cell phone subject to public review in a criminal trial if you carry the phone with you on duty?

After weeks of wrangling, Judge Stephen Pfeffer in the end agreed that the defense “had a right to access the requested information even without knowing whether any such information existed.” He did attach limitations. Only Boerth’s cell phone records during the controversial six-minute “missing footage” gap in his dash-cam recording would be subject to review. This apparently was the time the defense considered most likely that the alleged C.I. call occurred. And the State could request that the judge first inspect the records alone in his chambers to determine if they included “personal matters irrelevant to the case.”

With those conditions, he ordered Bevacqua-Young to produce Boerth’s cell phone records. The officer was “an arm of the State,” the court ruled, and therefore his private phone records were “within the possession, custody, or control of the State, making them subject to disclosure.” Still, the prosecutor steadfastly refused to order Boerth to surrender them. Read more

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New Englanders support greater access to public records.

New Englanders value openness in government, yet are skeptical that public officials share that value. They believe that having open access to the workings of government is important to citizenship. Most favor toughening the laws that protect access, and most agree that journalists are on the front lines in that fight.

Moreover, nearly nine out of ten New Englanders believe government agencies that wrongly withhold public records should pay the legal bills necessary to open them.

Those were among the findings of a recent poll of attitudes toward the First Amendment commissioned by The New England First Amendment Coalition and conducted by the University of New Hampshire’s Survey Center. Read more

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Orange County California Civil Case Documents Now Online

The Superior Court of California for the County of Orange is pleased to announce that
most current limited (actions filed for $25,000 or less) and unlimited (actions filed for
more than $25,000) civil case documents may now be downloaded for a fee directly
from the Court’s Web site. Documents filed since January 1, 2008 may be searched
and downloaded at www.occourts.org. From the homepage, select “online case
access” and follow the directions.

The fee for viewing and downloading imaged documents is $7.50 for each case
document that is downloaded (up to 10 pages) and $0.07 for each additional page.
Documents are in Portable Document Format (PDF) and can be searched in the Civil
Case Access section by case number or party’s name. Probate, Family Law, Small
Claims, Civil Harassment, Workplace Violence Prevention, and confidential or sealed
documents will not be available.

“Providing online access to court documents is an added convenience for the public,
saving time and the cost of commuting to a courthouse,” said Chief Executive Officer
Alan Carlson.

 Go to the site

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City Surveillance Cameras and California Public Records Law

Are city-owned and operated surveillance camera recordings of public areas subject to disclosure in accordance with the California Public Records Law?

A: Under the Public Records Act, public records — which include “any writing containing information relating to the conduct of the public’s business prepared, owned, used, or retained by any state or local agency regardless of physical form or characteristics,” Gov’t Code section 6252(e) — are presumed to be open to the public and must be disclosed unless a specific provision of the Act or other law exempts them from disclosure...

If they are not “records of intelligence information or security procedures of” the police department, but rather tapes that are maintained by some other city agency, then it would seem that you should have access to the video recordings regardless of their purpose. If they are maintained by the city police department, you should still have access to any portions of those videotapes that were not specifically created for or used as part of an investigation. Read more

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Are jail visitor sign-in logs public documents?

Does the public have the right to inspect jail visitor sign-in logs in California? I've been told no, but seen court rulings in other states that lead me to think this may be inaccurate. The right to inspect jail visitor sign-in logs would come from California’s Public Records Act, which provides, generally speaking, that writings created or used by government agencies in California are presumptively open to public inspection and copying unless a specific exemption of the PRA applies. If the “no” you refer to was in response to your request under the PRA, then the agency should have given you the basis for the denial, which would be a good place to start in evaluating the denial.

Possibly a jail would claim that disclosing records showing who has visited a particular inmate would constitute an invasion of the constitutional right to privacy sufficient to outweigh the public’s interest in reviewing such records. Although there is considerable judicial debate in California as to the right of privacy that inmates and their visitors have in their conversations, I am not aware of any authority as to whether the fact of the visit itself should be considered confidential. Read more

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State and Federal Case Law Now On Google

Google Scholar is indexing the case law in all 50 states - Court of Appeals and Supreme Court - and the federal courts.

As with the other Google search engines, Google Scholar makes use of its own advanced search operators. Search by keywords, personal names, inclusive dates, and specify one or more states in a single search. Options on a single search are limited to 1) Search all legal opinions and journals; 2) Search only US federal court opinions or, 3) Search only court opinions from self-selected states.

Wondering which courts are included and the inclusive dates? Ask Google Scholar Help:

Which court opinions do you include?

Currently, Google Scholar allows you to search and read opinions for US state appellate and supreme court cases since 1950, US federal district, appellate, tax and bankruptcy courts since 1923 and US Supreme Court cases since 1791 (please check back periodically for updates to coverage information). In addition, it includes citations for cases cited by indexed opinions or journal articles which allows you to find influential cases (usually older or international) which are not yet online or publicly available. Legal opinions in Google Scholar are provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied on as a substitute for legal advice from a licensed lawyer. Google does not warrant that the information is complete or accurate.

View a list of search results with citations and a 2-line summary of text where some or all of the keywords appear. From here you can select to read an entire case or view case summaries that have cited the selected case.

My search query [(garbage OR trash) (curb OR curbside) +privacy], limited to California courts, 1970-2009 returned 33 cases.

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Google Doesn't Always Look for All the Words

ThompsonPI: Google Doesn't Always Look for All the Words http://bit.ly/27S0cp
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U.S. Caselaw in Google Scholar

..More than 80 years of US federal caselaw (including tax and bankruptcy courts) and over 50 years of state caselaw is now fully searchable online, for free at Google Scholar.

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Jurors Rebel, Defy Judges, and Google Their Own Truth

Judge Zloch questioned the juror about his research, and found that it included evidence that the judge had specifically excluded. At this point, the trial might have still been salvageable; the juror could have been removed from the jury and deliberations could continue. However, Judge Zloch stumbled upon further juror misconduct. Eight other jurors had been doing independent research, blatantly disregarding the jury instructions.
These jurors were conducting Google searches on the lawyers, on the defendant, looking up news articles about the case, checking definitions on Wikipedia, and searching for evidence that had been specifically excluded by the judge.
One juror, when asked by Judge Zloch about the research, responded “[w]ell, I was curious.”
The New York Times coined the phrase “Google mistrial[,]” in an article describing this trial, and opined that there will be more and more Google mistrials as more and more incoming jurors are Internet savvy.

Read more
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New York paper fights website commenter subpoena

"A New York newspaper is engaged in a battle to quash a grand jury subpoena for the identities of some of its website commenters. Orange County District Attorney Frank Phillips last month served The (Chester) Chronicle with a subpoena seeking information about two anonymous posters. Read more Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator: