As a defendant facing criminal charges in New Jersey, you have a right to have an attorney represent you. If you cannot afford a lawyer, the courts will appoint a public defender to handle your case. You also have the right to represent yourself in court. As a New Jersey…
Forensic evidence, including evidence obtained through fingerprinting, ballistics, toxicology, and other scientific methods, is the basis of many criminal convictions. At the same time, the development of new investigative tools such as DNA analysis has helped to overturn false convictions and free people wrongly imprisoned. The Innocence Project says the…
People worry about the dangers of illegal drugs, but most drug-related deaths involve drugs that are at least sometimes legal. The risk of dying from an acute overdose of acetaminophen is much higher than the risk of dying from an acute overdose of cannabis, but federal law considers cannabis a…
Driving while intoxicated (DWI) is not a crime, according to New Jersey law. The traffic courts, not the criminal courts, rule on DWI cases, and when a DWI case goes to trial, there is no jury, so the judge determines the verdict, as in a civil lawsuit. Despite this, the…
For most people, few things are more off-putting than finding out that someone you are dealing with is a convicted sex offender. Sex crimes are considered to be among the most harmful intrusions into another person’s life. New Jersey imposes punishments for sex crime charges that include lifetime supervision and…
