A criminal conviction is a mark on your record that can significantly harm your future opportunities in life, including employment, housing, and retaining various civil rights you inherited or received as a citizen. The stigma of a criminal record is also ever present. Nearly 80 million Americans have a rap sheet – that is, they [...]

If you watch television crime dramas, or crime scene investigation shows, you may have seen an episode or two where DNA evidence helped to convict or exonerate a suspect. But do you know how DNA evidence is used in criminal prosecutions? We are going to look at how DNA evidence is used to help solve [...]

How can I confirm there is a Tennessee arrest warrant with my name on it? Tennessee does not yet have a state-wide warrants database, so you must search county criminal court databases online, or check the police or sheriff’s department website for their warrant database. If you have heard or have reason to believe that [...]

The New Year has brought in a series of new laws to the state of Tennessee. Some of them have the potential to affect your life and even your daily routine. In fact, some 16 new laws have entered the books this year. Let’s review a couple of new laws in particular that could impact [...]

A recent Pew Research Center study said that 38 percent of young people from 18 to 29 have at least one tattoo. That’s a lot of people with a lot of tattoos. When someone is arrested, often the arresting agency will obtain information about the tattoos. These descriptions may not be the something an accused [...]

The laws governing theft in our state can be confusing – especially if you’re accused of breaking one. Broadly speaking, under Tennessee state law, theft occurs when a person purposefully and knowingly takes property without the owner’s permission. There are a wide variety of theft classifications, both at the state level and the federal level. [...]

American society is rooted in law, order, and justice. Fortunately, there are procedures and rules in place in order to prevent and punish misconduct or errors made by prosecutors, judges, and others in the justice system. But what options do you have when these preventive measures and penalties do not work? Research and studies done [...]

Having a criminal record can be extremely damaging. Employers, landlords, creditors, and other individuals can access it; consequently, you can be denied employment, housing, credit, and more. Under certain circumstances, however, a criminal record can be erased if you can successfully petition for an order of expunction. Expungement is the legal process in which courts [...]

In early June, a federal jury in Hartford, CT found a former mortgage-bond trader guilty of fraud. Michael Gramins, formerly of Nomura Holdings Inc., was found guilty of conspiracy and cleared of six counts of fraud, while the jury deadlocked on his other two charges. Interestingly, his colleagues, Ross Shapiro and Tyler Peters, were also [...]

One of the most persistent problems in the United States is the addiction to and the abuse of drugs, both illegal and legal, and one of the most serious addiction and abuse problems involves opioid painkillers. Thus, the scope and impact of physicians overprescribing opioids is quite vast, as a 2014 National Institute on Drug [...]