Category: News

black activist dallas jailed facebook posts

A secretive federal surveillance program led to the arrest of a black activist in Dallas who was jailed for five months over his Facebook posts, a new report claims. The ordeal faced by Rakem Balogun was detailed by The Guardian last week. The black activist described how he was picked up in an FBI operation…

studies find undocumented immigrants not causing crime surge

Texas is on the frontline of illegal immigration with its border of more than 1,200 miles with Mexico. The state has also seen the enactment of a controversial ‘sanctuary cities’ law that allows police officers to inquire about a suspect’s nationality. Despite an intense national debate about immigration and crime, four new academic studies suggest…

Revenge Porn

Revenge porn has made headlines in recent years. It’s the practice of posting nude or semi-nude pictures of a former partner on the internet without his or her permission. Texas has criminalized the practice. However, a court has struck down the Texas revenge porn law for being too broad and in violation of the First…

what is a grand jury

Dallas Criminal Attorney Educates – What Is a Grand Jury? Just about everyone is familiar with the concept of a jury. Generally speaking, a jury consists of a group of people from the community who consider all the evidence in a case and, using jury instructions from the court, determine whether the prosecutor has proved…

austin bombings

Hate crimes have been spiking across the United States in recent years. Police believe deadly explosions that killed two African-Americans in Austin may be hate crimes. Packages containing bombs exploded in the city over a 10-day period. One detonated on March 2 and two 10 days later killing two people and injuring two others. Then…

snapchat

Threats to schools on social media are taken extremely seriously in Texas. At the end of last month, a 14-year-old was arrested in Pearland near Houston for an alleged Snapchat threat made against a school. Police officers visited a home in the area after a parent claimed her children received disturbing messages via the popular…

dna

Small samples of DNA are often used to clear up cold cases. Police recently revealed a discarded cigarette butt helped them charge a Texas man over the murder of a 50-year-old woman on Mother’s Day 2016. Byron Lloyd Collins, 29, was recently picked up by authorities at the same complex in Baytown where Natalia Shal…

gavel

It’s unusual for a judge to seek to influence the verdict of a jury, but this appears to have happened in Texas, according to a recent report. A state district judge in Comal County is said to have told the jury God told him to intervene and the jury should return a not guilty verdict…

texas death row interior

Texas executed more people than any other state in 2017, but the number of times inmates were put to death was again at a low in the Lone Star State. Seven men were executed in Texas in 2017. The figure was the same as 2016, a year with the lowest number of executions in two…

fraud

White collar crimes in Texas can involve large sums of money and lengthy prison sentences. Recently, two men from Texas were indicted in an alleged $1 million real estate investment scam. Earlier this month, they were indicted in an operation that involved expensive cars, private jets, and religious deception, reported AP. U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy…