Criminal courts

Jerusalem District Court, Criminal Case No. 373/86, verdict against Ivan (John) Demjanjuk, p. 2 Diesel motors , p. 7 SU-tanks V12 Diesel engines with 500/550 hp. 

United States v. Joseph Konopka, U.S. District Court, Criminal Complaint Case Number 02 CR, March 9, 2002, Cook County, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division and CNN. com, March 12, 2002. Man allegedly stored cyanide in Chicago subway, http //archives.cnn. com/2002/US/03/12/chicago.cyanide/index.html (accessed December 17, 2009). 

Historically, physical evidence has taken on increasing importance in criminal matters. Court decisions have consistentiy looked askance at a defendant s admissions of guilt and even question eyewitness testimony. Physical evidence has traditionally been viewed as impartial and unbiased, and not subject to the problems associated with confessions made by an accused or the testimony of witnesses. 

It is not uncommon for individuals under the influence of phencyclidine to come to the attention of the criminal justice system. Increasingly, there is a need for forensic experts to advise and testify in cases involving PCP and other psychoactive drugs. With the publication of a paper on acute intoxication and fatalities from PCP use, we began to receive requests from attorneys to evaluate PCP-related cases (Burns et al. 1975). We have now consulted in over 400 civil and criminal cases and have testified in municipal, superior, and Federal courts from Hawaii to Washington, D.C. 

This law, which is a criminal law, is so loosely worded that it is at the moment impossible to establish criteria for paints, varnishes, or lacquers to be placed on children s furniture or toys to be sold in Maryland. Further, the Maryland law has little protective value, since anyone can repaint children s furniture or toys with any material regardless of its suitability for the purpose and its inherent toxicity. This law, as it stands, places a heavy and complex burden on the manufacturer and marketer of children s toys and furniture—and necessarily on the manufacturer of paints, lacquers, and varnishes. The Maryland law has greater significance as a piece of troublesome legislation in that in the courts of the state of Maryland, the jury is the judge of the law as well as the facts under the law, and since under criminal law each case would be argued on its own merits, two different juries might reach contradictory decisions on the same set of circumstances. 

We said to the court When a country rearms against a military threat that is close at hand, those who make the munitions are not criminal. But if the defendants led an underground rearmament that went beyond all bounds of national defense, such conduct was one evidence that they were willing to risk an aggressive war. 

In asking the court to toss out the defense petition, we went back to first-year law school. What is a crime If I climb up to my neighbor s window intending to kill him, then shoot by mistake into an empty bed, I am only half a criminal. I had a murderous state-of-mind. There was no act of killing. 

In international law, as in domestic law, criminal liability requires two essential elements — action and state-of-mind. This court is being called upon to enforce the doctrine of international penal law — bom centuries ago, accepted by all major nations after the first World War, and first judicially applied by the International Military Tribunal — that the deliberate planning and waging of aggressive war is a crime. 

His guarantee was good. Without exception, the witnesses changed their stories under withering cross-examination, or were shown to have been the type of criminals whose word was worthless in any court. 

So, here I sit two years later and after one of the longest, most ridiculous trials in criminal history. Everyone was out to get me. I had killed eleven and injured forty-two. Some of the injuries were so severe and disfiguring that many of the women who testified in court looked like they were kissing cousins of Freddie Krueger, one of my all-time heroes. 

The investigative stop is predicated upon a reasonable suspicion, supported by articulable facts of past or present criminal activity, and based on aU of the circumstances. Probable cause is not required. Officers may stop, and briefly detain the person and their property. A pat down search of the person s outer clothing for weapons, to protect the officers and those in the immediate vicinity, may be conducted if the officer believes the person is armed and dangerous. Courts look to see if the good faith search was necessary and reasonable to insure the safety of others [40, 41]. Reasonable suspicion is more than a vague suspicion and is based on the totahty of the circumstances [42]. If probable cause is developed, the detention becomes an arrest. This doctrine has been appHed to vaHdate searches of airUne passengers. 

Validity of 18 U.S.C.A. Sect. 832. et seq. [141] and its predecessor statutes have not been questioned. Courts upheld criminal actions by stressing the statute s importance in the protection of passengers aboard public conveyances. 

Not until 1942 did the United States Supreme Court hold that it was unconstitutional to permanently sterilize people convicted of criminal offenses. ... 

All violations of the FD C Act are automatically criminal violations of law. On two occasions the US Supreme Court has held that any person standing in a responsible relationship to a violation of the FD C Act is criminally liable, regardless of the lack of knowledge or intent. The nature of the offence is the failure of an individual to take action to prevent a violation and to ensure compliance with the law. 

In the first few decades of the 1900s FDA brought hundreds of seizure and criminal actions to enforce the FD C Act. Beginning in the 1970s, the formal court enforcement actions have been replaced in two ways. First, FDA has promulgated hundreds of regulations that establish the precise requirements of the law, thus reducing the need for many court enforcement actions. Second, formal court enforcement actions have been replaced by informal administrative enforcement actions such as recalls... 

Levinson points out that the Second Amendment debate reveals a curious reversal of conservatives and liberals from their usual positions on civil rights. Liberals interpret tbe rest of the Bill of Rights broadly without worrying too much about tbe social cost of freeing criminals. However, they want to interpret the Second Amendment narrowly because of what they consider to be tbe social costs of gun ownership. Conservatives, on the other hand, often complain about the courts finding new rights in broad interpretations of the Bill of Rights but favor a broader interpretation where the Second Amendment is concerned. 

Gun rights advocates, however, see such efforts as an attempt to stretch reasonable concepts of liability into a form of backdoor gun control, in effect obtaining through the courts what they could not obtain through political means. They argue that if such suits are widely successful, gun manufacturers may be forced out of business, or at least forced to market only expensive handguns, affordable only by the well-off and by criminals. Thus, in a law journal article, Philip D. Oliver warns that... 

One characteristic of the civil justice system is that it is decentralized Different courts can and do come to different conclusions. In 2002, in the case of Cincinnati v. Beretta the Ohio State Supreme Court ruled that plaintiffs had adequately demonstrated that the availability of guns to criminals caused by negligent marketing represented a substantial danger to the community—a major public nuisance. 

U.S. V. Emerson, Criminal Action No. 6 98-CR-103-C (U.S. DISTRICT COURT FOR THE Northern District of Texas,... 

June The Ohio Supreme Court allows a suit against 15 gun manufacturers to proceed. Overturning a lower court decision, it accepts the city s claim that gun marketing practices created a substantial danger by making guns too easily available to criminals and children. 

August 1 A Michigan state appeals court rules that a state law passed in 2000 barred the city of Detroit and Wayne County from suing gun makers for the criminal misuse of firearms. 

Batey, Robert. Techniques of Strict Construction The Supreme Court and the Gun Control Act of 96%. American Journal of Criminal Law, vol. 13, Winter 1986, n.p. Discusses Supreme Court cases involving the Gun Control Act of 1968, pointing out ways that a case for reasonable doubt can be construed from the language, intent, or history of the law. 

Chiang, Harriet, and Kevin Fagan. Gunmakers Can Be Sued by Victims. San Francisco Chronicle, September 30, 1999, p. Al, A19. Reports that a California state court of appeals has, for the first time in U.S. legal history, ruled that a gun maker can be held liable for the criminal use of its products. The case arose ftom a 1993 mass shooting in a San Francisco office building. 

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