A recent article in the New York Times showed that between January 2016 and January 2017, more than 64,000 people died as a result of an overdose. (The drug that’s pushing those numbers ever higher is fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.) In Tennessee, there are rough estimates at how many deaths illegal drugs cause each year – about 1400 in 2015,…
Tennessee, like many places in the United States right now, is facing down the challenge of an opioid-fueled methamphetamine epidemic. It seems there is constant news coverage of drug busts and the dangerous and often deadly overdoses of the customers of those fledgling operations that are cropping up to meet the ever-growing demand for meth. The Tennessean reported on the…
We make mistakes in our youth; the young tend to think they’re invincible, and often can’t see the repercussions of a “mistake” that involves the law. But flash forward to now. You have gotten your life on track, and you looking forward to getting a good job and having a positive future – but your criminal record is hanging over…
Being arrested for a DUI in Tennessee is serious; you could lose your license, pay thousands of dollars in fines, and you may be ordered to undergo a substance abuse program. But there are some other tricky bits involved with a DUI that most people don’t know. So I wanted to make sure you could separate the facts from the…
While police can still inspect your phone for say a razor blade or something dangerous on the exterior, they are no longer allowed to search the contents of the phone without a warrant. This new ruling came into place Wednesday when unanimously, 9 of 9 justices agreed that cell phone and other small electronic device’s data are protected by Fourth…
In May of 2014, Governor Bill Haslam signed a very controlled, very limited bill regarding medical marijuana into law. The law allows for a four year study of cannibidiol, or CBD, by Vanderbilt University. High amounts of CBD have been linked to the effective treatment of seizures, though no one currently knows why. Discoveries like this led to the formation…
I have a secret – I’m a huge fan of police dramas. On the rare nights where I don’t have a meeting or work to do, I watch the same procedural police shows that the rest of Tennessee is watching. But unlike most of my neighbors, I’m watching them from the unique perspective of a criminal defense attorney. And what…