Is a police officer, without a warrant and uninvited, authorized under the Fourth Amendment to conduct a search of a vehicle parked near a residence? This is the issue the United States Supreme Court will decide next year in the case of Collins v. Virginia. I have a case in…
Restitution is an amount of money paid by someone convicted of a criminal offense. The purpose of restitution is to compensate a crime victim for actual losses incurred as a result of criminal activity. Importantly, restitution is not meant to compensate a crime victim for pain and suffering, hurt feelings,…
I have filed a Suppression Motion for a client based on a recent US Supreme Court decision, Rodriguez v. United States (2015.) The issue in Rodriguez is the extension of a routine traffic stop beyond the time necessary to write a traffic citation and what happens if incriminating evidence is…
Because of some recent news regarding a high profile case with which I was involved, there has been a good deal of discussion of the Grand Jury process and how it works. To many, even within the legal community, Grand Juries are mysterious and there is a lot of misinformation circulating…
Recently, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memorandum instructing US Attorneys to charge the “highest readily provable offense” regardless of other factors in all cases. This reverses an Obama-era policy that called for charging leaders and violent actors more severely than non-violent, non gang-related actors. The net result of these…
I recently became aware of a Texas case involving the use of call centers in India who “impersonated officials from the IRS or U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in a ruse designed to defraud victims located throughout the United States.” I advise my clients to be very skeptical about…
Alabama’s laws provide for three levels of drug offense — Possession, Distribution, and Trafficking. Trafficking is by far the most serious of these offenses and carries a mandatory prison sentence as outlined below. The distinction between Possession, Distribution, and Trafficking is based mainly on the weight of the drugs involved.…
While other states are decriminalizing or even legalizing marijuana for recreational use, Alabama has not changed their marijuana laws. Alabama law allows for possession of marijuana in the first degree (POM I) and second degree (POM II). POM II is different from POM I because POM II is for first…
We at Skier & Associates have received information that there will be a bill filed in the upcoming legislative session that would expand Alabama’s existing expungement law to allow expungement of certain convictions as well as pardoned convictions. As always, the legislative process is unpredictable and slow. Stay tuned to…
The Alabama State Board of Health created a controlled substance list with 5 different sections in it (called schedules I, II, III, IV, and V) and if you are caught with one of the substances on the list you can be charged. You don’t have to go through the criminal…