No one embodies the emerging consensus on the excessive cruelty of mandatory drug sentencing quite like Mark Osler. He’s currently a law professor, but back in the Nineties he worked as an assistant U.S. attorney, prosecuting crack cocaine cases in his native Detroit....
Firm News
For Police, A Debate Over Force, Cop Culture And Confrontation
Protests in Ferguson and New York this summer rekindled an old debate about how American police use force. The perception that cops are too aggressive has been fed not just by the high-profile deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, but also by a stream of...
N.D. oil boom ignites cash-spending splurge
WILLISTON, N.D. – The workers sometimes come in with stacks of $100 bills, their jeans and boots still covered in oil field mud as they scour the glass jewelry counter looking for clean sparkle. One oil field worker plopped down $25,000 for a diamond for his...
DNA frees North Carolina’s longest-serving death row resident
(CNN) — A pair of siblings who served decades behind bars in the rape and murder of a North Carolina child will walk out of prison free men Wednesday after DNA evidence implicated someone else. Henry McCollum and Leon Brown were just teenagers when they were arrested...
Charged as Adults, Children Are Abandoned When They Could Be Saved
A terrible tragedy has taken place in Michigan, with a 12-year-old boy accused of killing his 9-year-old companion. The decision to try such cases in adult court raises two fundamental questions. First, is this a reasonable course of action when the defendant is just...
Bismarck police ID man killed after reportedly pointing gun at kids
BISMARCK – Police have identified a man who was shot to death during a struggle that ensued after he reportedly pointed a handgun at three young children Saturday in a south Bismarck apartment. Kelly Carrol Smith, 54, lived roughly one block south of the apartment...
Man killed at worksite near Stanley
STANLEY — An Arkansas man working in western North Dakota’s energy industry was killed on the job Tuesday. Stanley Police Chief Kris Halvorson said Alan Eberhard, 51, of Harrisburg, Ark., had been working on a payloader hose at Dalton Logistics in Stanley when the...
Sober Driver Arrested for DUI After Deputy Crashes into Her
A 25-year-old woman, with nothing so much as a speeding ticket blemishing her record, is arrested for drunk driving after an officer rolls through a stop sign and hits her car. The woman was injured so seriously in the accident, she couldn’t blow into a breath-testing...
Williston police still seeking answers in gunshot report
WILLISTON — Williston police can’t say with certainty that a gunshot was fired at a girl who was riding her bicycle in Williston last week.Police received a report that two men driving an older black Chevy Silverado fired a shot in the area where the 7-year-old girl...
Man charged in North Dakota with masquerading as FBI agent
WILLISTON, N.D. — A convicted con man who swindled Nashville, Tennessee, businesses out of five-star hotel rooms, stretch limousine rides, helicopter rentals and expensive gifts didn’t fare quite as well during a month in the North Dakota oil patch, investigators...
