In 2016, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) published a detailed scientific assessment of forensic feature-comparison methods used in criminal courts. Feature-comparison methods are those that attempt to determine whether a crime scene sample came from a specific source (a person, a weapon, a shoe) by comparing patterns or features. Bite […]
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced this week a $600,000 partnership with Othram (a Texas-based forensic biotechnology company) to deploy investigative genetic genealogy against Florida’s backlog of more than 21,000 unsolved homicides, some dating back to the 1960s. The initiative begins with three cold cases from the 1970s and 1980s in Broward County, Miami-Dade, and […]
On March 26, 2026, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed House Bill 1020 into law, making Colorado the first state in the nation to prohibit arrests based solely on the results of colorimetric field drug tests. The bill passed both chambers of the Colorado legislature without a single dissenting vote. Texas has no equivalent law. Field […]
In January 2026, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the Office of Inspector General launched a sting operation at the Mark W. Michael Unit in Tennessee Colony, Anderson County, after learning that drones were being used to drop large bundles of contraband over the prison walls. When the operation concluded, investigators had seized more […]
Most people charged with family violence assault are looking at a Class A misdemeanor which carries up to one year in county jail and a $4,000 fine. That is serious, but it is a misdemeanor. Continuous violence against the family under Texas Penal Code §25.11 is different. Under §25.11, two separate incidents of family violence […]
On March 26, 2026, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed House Bill 1020 into law, making Colorado the first state in the nation to prohibit arrests based solely on the results of colorimetric field drug tests. The bill passed both chambers of the Colorado legislature without a single dissenting vote. Texas has no equivalent law. Field […]
A Tarrant County jury recently sentenced DeAujalae Evans, 26, to life in prison after she pleaded guilty to intoxication manslaughter in the death of Fort Worth Police Sgt. Billy Randolph. Sergeant Randolph was working a crash scene on I-35W in August 2024 when Evans (who reportedly consumed approximately 10 shots of tequila that night) struck […]
Oral fluid drug testing (collecting saliva and testing it for the presence of drugs) is expanding in both criminal justice and workplace settings, and Texas is actively developing its use in roadside DWI investigations. Understanding what oral fluid testing can and cannot show, how it differs from urine and blood testing, and where its reliability […]
On April 8, 2026, U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett sentenced Jasveen Sangha (the Los Angeles drug dealer federal prosecutors called the “Ketamine Queen”) to 15 years in federal prison for distributing the ketamine that killed actor Matthew Perry in October 2023. The sentence was the harshest imposed on any of the five defendants in […]
National headlines about criminal justice reform in 2026 tell a story of accelerating bipartisan progress at the state level: more reform laws passed in 2025 than in 2024, and a growing list of policy changes that reformers describe as achievable. The Prison Policy Initiative’s annual guide to winnable reforms identifies 34 specific changes across eight […]