Articles Posted in Criminal

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Over the past couple of years, e-bikes have exploded in popularity across California, especially in Orange County, where sunny weather and beach paths make them an easy choice for getting around. But with that popularity has come something else: a wave of new rules, penalties, and even criminal cases aimed at riders, including both adults and minors. Cities and state lawmakers are scrambling to keep up, and that means regular riders sometimes find themselves facing unexpected fines, bike impounds, or even misdemeanor or felony charges.

What’s Behind the Crackdown?

Cities and counties are seeing more collisions, dangerous riding near schools, and young riders on high-powered or modified e-bikes. As a result, local governments have moved quickly, often faster than the state, to create new regulations. These include helmet requirements for minors, restrictions on riding in certain areas, impoundment authority, and stricter enforcement of speed and modification limits.

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When most people hear about the U.S. meth crisis, they picture desert labs in Mexico or rural houses in the Midwest. But the story actually starts thousands of miles away — in the sprawling industrial zones of China. There, among thousands of legitimate factories, a quieter trade has been thriving: the production and export of chemicals that can be turned into methamphetamine.

According to a 2016 report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, as much as 80 percentof the chemicals Mexican cartels use to make meth originally came from China (USCC.gov). Those cartels — mainly the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel — supply around 90 percent of the meth that ends up in the United States. So even though the cooking happens in Mexico, the recipe starts with Chinese ingredients.

In the last few years, U.S. officials have repeatedly busted Chinese firms for shipping “ton quantities” of precursor chemicals used to make meth, MDMA, and fentanyl. Just in October 2023, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned 28 Chinese individuals and companies for doing exactly that (home.treasury.gov). And in June 2025, border agents seized 50,000 kilograms of meth precursors at the Port of Long Beach — a shipment that had come from China and was headed to the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico (ICE.gov).

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In the United States, birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Affirmed by the United States Supreme Court in 1898 in the case, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, this right extends to any child born in the United States, regardless of the child’s parents’ nationality and regardless of whether that child later lives in another country.

Recently President Trump signed an executive order to deny birthright citizenship to specific categories of individuals. The executive order was immediately challenged in the federal courts, and it in all probability the United States Supreme Court will once again be tasked with interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment.

The executive order would deny citizenship to those babies born of undocumented immigrants or those in the country with temporary status. It is the latter category that is the subject of this blog.

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“[A]t the very core” of the Fourth Amendment “stands the right of [an individual] to retreat into his [or her] own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.” (Silverman v. United States (1961) 365 U.S. 505, 511.) This protection against unreasonable search and seizure, that is, a search without a warrant, extends to the curtilage of the home.  Curtilage is the areas immediately surrounding a home, such as porches, and other protected spaces where individuals maintain significant privacy expectations. Law enforcement searches of curtilage has been challenged, defined, and redefined by our courts for over 150 years.

Even in cases where there is a valid search warrant, a search of a home’s curtilage can render the search unlawful. The U.S. Supreme Court in the case Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1 (2013) held that after law enforcement brought a drug-sniffing dog to the front porch of a house – that dog immediately alerting to drugs, prompting law enforcement to obtain a search warrant for the home—resulted in an unlawful search even though a warrant was obtained. The evidence (drugsthat were discovered in the search upon warrant) was suppressed because taking the dog to the front porch to sniff for drugs was a violation of the “physical trespass test.” In other words, the court held that the dog sniff itself was a search, and because it occurred on the curtilage of the home, it was a violation of the Fourth Amendment.  The upshot of the Jardines case is that law enforcements physical invasion into protected areas can itself trigger Fourth Amendment scrutiny, regardless of whether there’s an expectation of privacy.

Recently, the Ninth Circuit in the case Tran & Chong v. United States (9th Cir. Aug. 14, 2024) 112 F.4th 848, relied upon Jardines when it held that an unlawful search took place when law enforcement entered a residential driveway and peered into the garage on the property.

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Perhaps going down as one of the most inventive and also one of the stupidest insurance fraud crimes in recent memory, a group of scammers filed several insurance claims for damage to their three luxury vehicles.

The four scammers filed separate insurance claims, all to separate insurance companies, after they allegedly found their respective vehicle interiors destroyed by a bear while parked in the San Bernardino mountains. The vehicle owners even provided video footage of the bear inside their vehicles. As those of us who are visited the mountains of Southern California, we know that bears have been known to find their way into the vehicles in search of food. But one of the insurance companies was dubious of the video “evidence.” It just didn’t look like a real bear.

And, indeed, it was not. The California Insurance Department was alerted. The Insurance Department investigated and found the two other similar claims of bear damage on the same day and location.  The video footage was submitted to the California Department of Wildlife which agreed with the Insurance Department. The “bear” looked to the biologist investigating the footage like a human in a bear suit. And, indeed, it was.

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California Penal Code section 3055 provides that inmates who have been incarcerated for 20 years or more and are over the age of 50 or those incarcerated for 25 years or more and are over the age of 60 are eligible for what is called “Elderly Parole.” Even violent sex offenders and child molesters are eligible. The only inmates not eligible are those who were sentenced to death or life in prison without the possibility of parole. Those under 60 years of age are not eligible if they are serving a sentence for a second or third strike under the three strikes law. However, after reaching the age of 60, those inmates are also eligible.

An inmate who reaches eligibility for this program is entitled to a parole hearing. Among other factors, the Board of Parole Hearings considers the early release applicant’s physical condition, mental capacity, and the inmate’s social adjustment or lack thereof while incarcerated.  (California Code of Regulations, title 15, section 2449.43.)

The Elderly Parole program as it currently operates became effective on January 1, 2024; however elderly parole programs have operated in California for a decade.

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Here’s a recipe for the stupid criminal files:

Fill large packages – about watermelon size – with methamphetamine. Form each package into a watermelon shape and cover each package with a wrapper that is printed to look like a watermelon. Oh, don’t forget to slap an agricultural sticker on each package. Load the packages up in a watermelon truck from Mexico bound for California. What could go wrong?

In the annals of disguises that didn’t work, a truckload of 1,220 packages of methamphetamine wrapped in plastic painted to look like watermelon (well, sort of), was seized among real watermelons as the truck crossed from Mexico into the US at the Otay Mesa crossing. The total amount of methamphetamine seized weighed in at around 4,500 pounds. The haul is estimated to be worth $5 million.

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You’ve been stopped by the police for speeding. Can the officer search your vehicle without your consent? The answer is yes and no. Yes, the officer can search your vehicle, without your consent, if he or she has probable cause to believe your vehicle contains evidence of a crime. This is one of the so-called automobile exceptions to 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

Let’s say the officer stops your vehicle and as soon as you roll down the window, a strong waft of cannabis smoke hits the officer’s olfactory senses. While recreational cannabis is legal in California, smoking it while driving is not. In this scenario, the officer can establish probable cause—that is a reasonable belief based on the fact of the strong smell of burning cannabis in the vehicle—that there is evidence of crime in the vehicle, to wit: burned cannabis.

Let’s consider another scenario. The police encounter a group of known gang members in a parking lot. Several individuals are arrested for weapons possession. The car belonging to one of those individuals was parked in the parking lot where the police encounter occurred. Even though this individual (here, the defendant) was not in his car at the time, the police surmised they had probable cause to search the vehicle. And indeed, the law permits the police to search an unoccupied parked car if “there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular

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A law enforcement officer can perform a temporary investigative detention of an individual only when the officer can articulate specific facts, which considered in light of the circumstances, provides an objective reason to believe the individual is engaged, or about to engage, in criminal activity.  (A detention occurs when an individual does not feel that he or she is free to leave, as contrasted with a consensual police encounter in which a person can just walk away.)

Note that the officer’s reasons for believing a detention is warranted is an objective standard—the officer’s assessment must be such that a law enforcement officer presented with the same circumstances would reasonably suspect possible criminal activity. Thus, an officer who detained an individual on the suspicion that the individual was engaged in criminal activity simply because that individual is walking in a high crime area would not be objectively reasonable. But if that individual is also observed by the officer in what appears to be a drug transaction, a detention might be objectively reasonable.

Lawful detentions have often been a bone of contention between defense attorneys and the prosecution, and the courts have often taken a fairly hard line on the subject. For example, the courts have held that a lawful detention can be found simply on an individual’s attire, demeanor, evasiveness and other ambiguous circumstances. Whether a detention is lawful or not is important because a lawful detention often leads to a search of and if the officer discovers a crime (for example, find drugs or a weapon on the individual), any subsequent charges can be dismissed if the defendant’s criminal defense attorney files a successful motion to suppress evidence on grounds that the detention was unlawful.

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The Fourth Amendment provides that law enforcement cannot conduct a search of property or person without a valid warrant. Any warrantless search is unlawful and should law enforcement arrest you pursuant to that search, the arrest itself becomes unlawful.

However, there are exceptions where a warrantless search is permitted under the law. One of those exceptions is consent to the search. As I have discussed elsewhere, you are not required under the law to consent to a search, and it is usually a good idea not to. Unfortunately, consent searches are quite frequent because people are often frightened and intimidated by the officer’s request. But even a consent search may be unlawful if consent is not voluntarily given.

If you consent to a search and you get arrested due to contraband found in the search, the arrest is presumed lawful because you consented to the search. But what if you consented because the police “strong-armed” you into allowing the search or threatened you or acquired your consent by deception? Whether the consent is voluntary or not is oftentimes difficult to determine, but it is the prosecutions burden to show in light of the circumstances that the consent was voluntarily given.

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