In the old days people had to unlock their phones with a passcode or a password. Phone makers like Apple made that antiquated and obsolete when the introduced TouchID in 2013 starting with the iPhone 5S. TouchID was (and is) a biometric fingerprint recognition system that allowed you to unlock your phone (and later your […]

A lot of people are wondering when courts will reopen to in-person court settings. Here is the latest guidance from the state Office of Court Administration. Non-essential in-person court settings of any size should be delayed until at least June 1, 2020. They may be delayed even longer than that though, as the guidelines lay […]

A group of inmates have brought a federal lawsuit against Dallas County over the county’s handling of COVID-19 in the jail. The lawsuit demands immediate release for medically high-risk inmates as well as proper sanitary and social distancing protocols to be followed in the jail. The lawsuit is ongoing with hearings yesterday and again today […]

There’s been a lot of media coverage about how a rise in domestic violence cases is a sad and frightening consequence of staying at home due to COVID-19 (see examples of coverage here, here, and here). For victims of domestic violence this is, of course, a nightmare scenario: choose between staying at home with an […]

My friend Scott Henson over at the acclaimed blog Grits for Breakfas has another fantastic post, this time focusing on something I’ve blogged about before: coronavirus in our Texas jails. As of yesterday, Grits has the numbers of inmates who’ve tested positive: Statewide, according to data from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, as of […]

I’ve mentioned this before: while people never want to go jail, now is a historically bad time to get arrested & go to jail with the COVID-19 pandemic still raging (especially in jails). A few days ago I got a call from a potential client who’d been contacted by a detective about a criminal investigation. […]