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NACDL is committed to enhancing the capacity of the criminal defense bar to safeguard fundamental constitutional rights.
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NACDL’s mission is to serve as a leader, alongside diverse coalitions, in identifying and reforming flaws and inequities in the criminal legal system, and redressing systemic racism, and ensuring that its members and others in the criminal defense bar are fully equipped to serve all accused persons at the highest level.
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What strategies can defense lawyers use to challenge this new and invasive investigative technique?
In the digital age, law enforcement is savvy enough to pull information about your client’s online presence and use it against them. Getting this data and challenging it are skills every modern defense attorney needs. This webinar covers how social media evidence can and cannot be accessed, how it’s authenticated, and viable legal arguments to use and challenge it in your own cases.
To access this content, you will have to create an NACDL account and complete a short form. You will not have to purchase a membership.
​​​​Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) systems are getting more sophisticated and more accessible to police. ALPRs can gather information about people and their movements, but police also use them creatively: creating associations between vehicles and identifying “suspicious” travel patterns.
This webinar from NACDL’s Fourth Amendment Center explores ALPR systems, the cases affecting law on open roads, and how to challenge this evidence in your own case.
Law enforcement agencies use facial recognition technology (FRT) to assist in identifying unknown people—suspects, victims, witnesses, and others—captured on video or in photos. It has become a widespread investigative tool, despite issues with reliability and inconsistencies in how it is used by law enforcement. The below document explains the technology in more detail and walks through some potential arguments for attorneys challenging facial recognition evidence in their cases. If you are looking for more information, or assistance with FRT in a case, contact us at 4ac@nacdl.org.
This Litigation Manual was developed by NACDL’s Criminalization of Reproductive Health Task Force to serve as a comprehensive resource to effectively litigate abortion cases. As the nation’s preeminent criminal defense bar, we are deeply committed to ensuring that the defense community is fully equipped to represent all accused persons at the highest level. This resource is restricted to defense attorneys. It is not to be used by those employed by prosecution or law enforcement organizations or otherwise involved in the prosecution of criminal cases or law enforcement. [Released Nov. 2023]
On March 15, 2022, Wyoming enacted W.S. §35-6-102 (2022) to restrict abortion in the absence of federal abortion protection under the Roe decision. The law is designed such that subsection (b) overrides subsection (a), upon the overturn of Roe. Subsection (a) is a standing restriction on abortions after viability except to preserve the life and health of the mother. Upon certification by the governor, subsection (a) will be replaced with a ban on abortions at all stages, with exceptions for heath of the mother, sexual assault, and incest.
A law first enacted in 1849 bans the abortion of “an unborn child,” with an exception only to save the life of the mother. Wis. Stat. § 940.04.
In 1848, Virginia passed a law criminalizing performing abortion procedures, except in certain cases where the act was done in “good faith, with the intention of saving the life of such woman or child.” This statute remains valid in West Virginia, post the state’s secession in 1863.
Washington legalized abortions within the first months of pregnancy with Referendum 20 in 1970 — three years before Roe v. Wade — becoming the first state to do so. Referendum 20 legalized abortion for women “not quick with child” and within the “four lunar months after conception.” Abortion, ch. 3, § 2, 1970 Wash. Sess. Laws 23, 24 (repealed 1992). Prior to Referendum 20, abortion was a criminal offense in Washington, except in cases to preserve the mother's life. Referendum 20 was superseded by Roe v. Wade prior to its repeal in 1992 after Initiative 120 was approved.
In 1975, Virginia enacted a general prohibition against abortion.
1971 – Vermont enacted an abortion statute that criminalized abortion unless the abortion was medically necessary to preserve the woman’s life. Under this statute, only the abortion provider was criminalized and not the person who received the abortion.
In 1876, the Utah Territory adopted a law that banned abortion except to save a pregnant person’s life.
In 1854, Texas first enacted a criminal abortion statute, which was shortly modified into substantially the form that the abortion statute took in 1973, when the Supreme Court held the Texas law unconstitutional in Roe v. Wade.
Absent litigation resulting in a stay or disputing the effective date, Tennessee’s trigger law, TCA 39-15-213, will likely go into effect thirty days after Dobbs judgement is issued, or sometime in mid-August of 2022. That law bans abortion in virtually all circumstances and punishes the violation of the statute as a C Felony, authorizing imprisonment for a term of three to six years. The defenses are extremely narrow.
In 2005, South Dakota passed SL 2005, Ch 187 § 6. This law prohibits abortion at all stages of pregnancy "effective on the date states are recognized by the United States Supreme Court to have the authority." Not only does this law ban abortion at all stages, but it also makes it a Class 6 felony for any.