During a recent inspection, the Nassau County, New York, police crime lab was found to have a whopping fifteen issues of noncompliance with accepted standards of crime lab procedures. The issues were enough of a concern for the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board (ASCLD/LAB) - the crime lab's accrediting agency - to place the crime lab on probation for one year.

On August 3 of this year, President Obama signed legislation changing the federal mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine, bringing them closer to that of powder cocaine. The new law repeals older legislation passed in the 1980s, when many saw crack as a growing epidemic that could devastate urban areas. At the time, the earlier laws had the support of many African-American lawmakers and leaders, but the fallout from those laws has been that of unfair bias against urban blacks.

In early June, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the parameters of the Miranda decision (requiring the familiar warning that begins "You have the right to remain silent."), asserting that criminal suspects must now explicitly state to police that they're invoking their right to remain silent. Dissenting justices wrote that the decision turns Miranda "upside down."

Laws requiring sex offender registration exist in some form in all 50 states. These regulations were initially proposed as a way to provide information about the location of persons convicted of sex-related crimes and to discourage registered offenders from committing additional crimes.

Peter E. Brill of the Brill Legal Group, P.C. has achieved a victory in the face of difficult odds in the prosecution of a veteran New York City Police Detective charged with improperly dealing with his confidential informants.

If you are convicted of a violent crime in the state of New York, you are required to provide a DNA sample to authorities.

Around the country, states are cracking down on drunk driving. In state after state, legislatures are enacting ever-increasing penalties for drivers convicted of multiple drunk driving infractions, and New York is no exception. A new law, called Leandra’s Law, has been enacted in New York to trigger substantial penalties if a child under 16 is in the car at the time of a drunk driving offense.