Recent Blog Posts
Wisconsin Introduces Controversial Familial DNA Testing
Forensic science has made great strides over the past several decades, turning a variety of technological advances into techniques for solving crimes. Arguably, the most important of these advancements was the ability to analyze DNA evidence left at crime scenes. Now, police departments in Wisconsin are introducing a controversial new version of DNA testing, familial DNA testing. This form of testing allows law enforcement officials to identify family members of people who leave DNA at a crime scene in order to better track them down. However, this DNA testing technology also has its opponents; many people are raising concerns about how it invades people's privacy in order to apprehend their relatives.
Online Movie Download Woes Continue in Hollywood
The music industry of the 1990’s has seen a lot of changes as cassette tapes replaced vinyl records and cd’s replaced cassette tapes. However, perhaps the most impactful change of that decade could be contributed to the growing popularity with digital music replacing cd’s, causing the music industry revenue to plummet to an all-time low. In 1999 Napster made its debut as a free online file-sharing service. While the free downloading service was eventually deemed illegal, in the interim, music sales took a drastic hit.
Unfortunately, the music industry isn’t the only one suffering from illegal downloads. The movie industry is also seeing the affects of Internet piracy. After its recent debut in August, Hollywood’s movie “Expendables 3” experienced dismal box office sales. According to the show’s directors, illegal downloads of the movie are the cause. On July 24, 2014, just before its official release to the box office, “Expendables 3” illegally appeared online. Within 12 hours, over 100,000 copies of this movie were illegally downloaded. A recent online article by Torrent Freak suggests that Nu Image, the company behind the movie, claims the loss has been devastating. The CEO of Nu Image, Avi Lerner, claims the stealing of such intellectual property has cost the movie box office $250 million.
New Interactive Map Shows Traffic Fatalities
It seems like every day the news has a report about a tragic traffic accident, but hearing about them just one at at time can make it difficult to visualize the full scale of the problem caused by careless drivers. However, there is now a tool available that can change that. The University of Wisconsin Madison's Traffic Operations and Safety Lab, with the help of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and a local news website, has created a map that allows the public to view the traffic fatalities across the state.
How the Map Works
The software, which appears to be built on top of Google's framework, displays markers representing traffic fatalities over an interactive map of the state of Wisconsin. Clicking on a marker yields more information about the crash, such as when it happened, the number of deaths, and any factors that may have caused the accident.
Insanity Defense: Mental Health and the Legal System
Modern media like movies and television often like to use the intersection of mental health and the law as a plot device, playing on legal theories like the insanity defense. However, this trend often leads to misconceptions about how mental health and the criminal justice system interact.
Fundamentally, a defendant's mental health can become important at two separate points during the case. First, it may affect whether the defendant can actually be tried, as in the recent case of the young girl accused of attempting to murder her friend in order to appease a fictional horror movie villain. Second, a defendant's mental health may be raised as a defense to a crime.
Fitness to Stand Trial
The preliminary point in the case where the defendant's mental health can be an issue is before the trial even starts. Chapter 971.13 of the Wisconsin Statutes requires that a defendant be mentally competent to stand trial. This means that the defendant must be able to understand the trial and what is happening to him or her, and he or she must be mentally capable of assisting his or her defense team in the way that a defendant normally would. So long as a defendant is unable to do those things he or she cannot be tried. However, the defendant is periodically reevaluated to determine his or her condition, and also receives treatment in order to try to make him or her mentally competent. Additionally, according to the statute, if a person is competent to stand trial only because they are being medicated, they still qualifies to be tried under the law.
Wisconsin Judges Showing OWI Leniency
The Wisconsin state legislature has attempted to take a hard line when it comes to the crime of Operating While Intoxicated (OWI). One major part of this effort has been their institution of mandatory minimum sentences for repeat OWI offenders. However, the exact length of the mandatory minimum depends on the number of previous OWIs, how long ago they were, and a variety of other factors. The result is that the mandatory minimum sentence for the crime can range anywhere from just a few days to four years in prison.
Now, a recent report by Gannett Wisconsin Media has revealed that some judges are not abiding by these mandatory minimums, and are issuing more lenient sentences. Although some are concerned about the fact that this report shows judges exceeding their authority, it also highlights the controversial nature of mandatory minimum sentences.
Bike Accident Injuries in Wisconsin
Bicycles have become increasingly popular over the past decade as the cost of gas has risen and people have taken a more active interest in the health of the environment. In fact, according to statistics published by a bicycle industry magazine, bike sales have increased more than five percent over the past three years alone. While this increase in biking may be good for the planet, it can also pose a serious risk to pedestrians. Many pedestrians are not as careful watching for bikes as they are with cars, but bicycle-pedestrian collisions can still cause serious injuries. With more cyclists on the roads and sidewalks, it can be important for pedestrians to understand the dangers and know how to react.
Bike Accident Injuries
Police Find Texting and Driving Bans Difficult to Enforce
The advent of text messaging and the rapid spread of smartphones has led to a common problem, texting and driving. People who are texting and driving take their eyes and concentration off the road and that can cause deadly accidents. In response, numerous states have passed laws making it illegal to text and drive; however, these bans are proving challenging for police officers to enforce. In fact, a local Wisconsin news station recently compiled the citation statistics for the four years that the ban has been in place. It turns out that the state police have only issued 229 citations during that entire period.
The Problem with Texting and Driving
The core problem with texting and driving, apart from the fact that it takes people's eyes off the road, is in the way the human brain multitasks. Although the expression “multitasking” is common enough and many people brag about their skill at it, the actual phenomenon itself is something of a myth. People can certainly do multiple things at once, but the brain cannot. Instead, the brain rapidly switches back and forth between the two tasks. At the speed that it does this switching, it seems like multitasking, but the problem is that the constant switching takes a toll on the brain's abilities. What this means for texting and driving is that even when a person is looking at the road, his or her divided attention is preventing him or her from seeing about half of what is going on in his or her visual field. This sort of carelessness can cause accidents, and it is what led the state legislature to pass the texting ban.
ATV and Snowmobile Accidents
Wisconsin has a large amount of open land, perfect for riding ATVs on, and with winter approaching, it will soon become time for people to start breaking out their snowmobiles as well. While these vehicles can be fun for experienced, responsible riders, they also pose a danger. According to statistics compiled by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, dozens of people each year die related to ATV and snowmobile accidents. It is important to understand that these vehicles are very different from cars, which means that the causes of ATV and snowmobile accidents, injuries, and litigation surrounding injuries is different from an ordinary traffic accident.
Causes of Accidents
Riders tend to take ATVs and snowmobiles off of open roads and into fields, woods or other rough terrain. This can lead to types of accidents that do not occur often with more mundane vehicles. For instance, 45 percent of ATV and UTV fatalities last year occurred when a vehicle rolled over on top of its rider. While rollovers do happen with cars, they are not nearly so common or so deadly. The combination of less experienced riders, more treacherous terrain, and fewer safety precautions like roofs and roll bars make rollovers more dangerous in these sorts of vehicles.
How the Grand Jury Works
Recent events in Ferguson and New York have prompted an increased interest into the workings of the criminal justice system. One particular area of interest is the way in which a grand jury functions. Although grand juries often appear tangentially in news stories, their secretive nature means that most people tend to pay them little attention. At their heart, grand juries are about deciding whether there is enough evidence that a person committed a crime for there to be a full trial on the issue, making their job much different than the trial jury, also known as a petit jury, which much actually decide whether a person is guilty of a crime.
The Purpose of Grand Juries
The purpose of grand juries is to ask a group of people to review the evidence against a possible defendant to determine whether there is “probable cause” to believe that the defendant committed a crime. Importantly, the standard of probable cause is a considerably lower standard than at the actual trial, where the defendant must be shown to be guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The use of these grand juries is actually the exception more than the rule, at least in Wisconsin. Here, most criminal cases begin with the district attorney's decision to file a criminal complaint. However, there are cases in which the district attorney may feel that it is better to have a group of people analyze the evidence and determine whether the person appears to have committed the crime, and that is when they can convene a grand jury.
New DNA Collection Law Makes More Work for Wisconsin Law Enforcement
The advent of DNA evidence has allowed police to solve crimes more easily and with greater certainty than before. Now, new DNA evidence collection requirements are pushing the state to expand its workforce to keep up with the increasing flow of samples that will soon come through state labs. These new requirements may keep Wisconsin citizens safer, but some members of the public are also concerned about privacy rights. In some circumstances, the new collection requirements come into effect before a person is convicted, so the state may end up logging DNA from innocent people.
New Collection Requirements
The new collection requirements for Wisconsin police departments become active on April 1st of next year, and they greatly expand the amount of DNA that the state is required to collect. As it stands, Wisconsin only collects DNA from people who have been convicted, and even then, only people whose convictions were for felonies or sex-related misdemeanors. These new requirements instruct the police to take samples from a broader set of people.