Criminal Insights
Analysis and practical guides on criminal.
40 articles, checklists, and guides on criminal law, written by the attorneys at MC Law. Every piece is general information, not legal advice—for a specific matter, contact the firm.
Getting Released Before Trial: A Practical Guide
This guide is the sequence for a person arrested and the family trying to get them out. It covers what to do in the first hours including the phone calls that must not be made, how to build the release package that actually decides detention hearings, what happens at the pretrial services interview and what to say in it, how to prepare for and argue a detention hearing, how to read a bail bond contract before signing it, how to handle conditions that cannot be met, what to do about a missed court date, and how to reopen or seek review of a detention order when the first hearing goes badly.
Bail and Pretrial Release: Detention, Conditions, and the Money Bail Debate
Whether a person is released before trial changes almost everything about the case, and the decision is usually made in a hearing lasting minutes, on incomplete information, within days of arrest. This article explains the constitutional framework from the Excessive Bail Clause through Stack v. Boyle and United States v. Salerno, the federal Bail Reform Act's structure of a presumption of release and a graduated set of conditions, how detention hearings actually work and what the rebuttable presumptions do, the probable cause timing rules, the mechanics of cash bail, commercial sureties, and unsecured bonds, the pretrial services and risk assessment apparatus, the reform movement and the evidence behind it, and how release is revoked.
Juvenile Defense Toolkit: Intake, Detention Hearings, Disposition, and Sealing
This toolkit collects the working documents of a juvenile delinquency matter: a wallet invocation card and parent instruction sheet, records request letters, a diversion agreement review sheet, a detention release plan template and risk assessment challenge, suppression and competency motion outlines, a transfer hearing outline organized around the Kent factors with a developmental evaluation engagement letter, a disposition memorandum and character letter request, condition modification and violation response tools, ability-to-pay and fee waiver motions, placement grievance and release planning tools, and a sealing petition outline.
Juvenile Court and Delinquency Response Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a juvenile delinquency matter from the moment of police contact through sealing the record. It covers the invocation script and what never to consent to, the counsel decision that must not be waived, intake and diversion review, the detention release plan built from logistics, the predisposition preparation that determines the outcome, transfer hearing requirements, probation conditions and violation response, fees and ability-to-pay inquiries, placement and release planning, collateral consequences in school, housing, immigration, and licensing, and the sealing conversation that belongs at disposition.
Representing a Child in Juvenile Court: A Practical Guide for Families
This guide is the sequence for a family whose child has been taken into custody or referred to juvenile court. It covers what to say and not say at the moment of police contact, why counsel must never be waived and how appointed counsel actually works, how the intake decision is made and how to influence it, what a diversion contract should and should not contain, how to win a detention hearing with logistics rather than argument, how the predisposition report drives everything and how to shape it, what a transfer hearing requires, how to handle probation conditions and violations, and how to get the record sealed.
Juvenile Justice: Delinquency Proceedings, Transfer to Adult Court, and Records
Juvenile court was built on a promise that turned out to be half kept: informal proceedings in the child's interest, in exchange for fewer rights. The Supreme Court corrected the worst of that in the 1960s and has since built a separate constitutional doctrine holding that children are different for sentencing purposes. This article explains how a delinquency case actually moves from police contact through intake, detention, adjudication, and disposition, what rights a child has and which one they still lack, how a case gets transferred to adult court and why that decision matters more than the verdict, status offenses and the school-to-court pipeline, and how juvenile records follow a person despite the promise that they would not.
Responding to a Grand Jury Subpoena: A Practical Guide for Companies and Executives
A grand jury subpoena is the broadest compulsory process in American law, and the window for responding well to one is measured in days. The recipient must preserve immediately, determine whether the company is a target, subject, or witness, negotiate scope with a prosecutor who expects to be engaged rather than fought, and manage the divergence between the company's interests and those of its employees. This guide runs the response in the order the clock requires, from the first hour through production, privilege review, and testimony. It covers the constitutional asymmetry that leaves corporations without a Fifth Amendment privilege while individuals retain one, the obstruction exposure that destroys more companies than the underlying conduct, and the practical decisions about counsel, cooperation, and disclosure that shape everything after.
Community Supervision Toolkit: Conditions, Modification, Violations, and Early Termination
A working kit for community supervision. Section A compares probation, parole, and supervised release and maps what each revocation produces. Section B holds the compliance file templates: a contact log, a payment ledger, and a test record. Section C holds communications: a same day problem notice, a self report before a test, a travel request, a records demand, and a confirmatory test demand. Section D holds motions: modification, condition challenge on vagueness overbreadth and delegation grounds, and early termination. Section E holds the revocation hearing package including a Bearden financial showing and a disposition plan. Section F holds letters for employers and providers to write. Section G collects the primary authorities.
Supervision Conditions and Revocation Hearing Checklist: A Practical Checklist
A checklist for community supervision, from intake through termination. It opens with the eight questions to ask at the first meeting that nobody volunteers, then the compliance file that decides every later motion, then the operating routines for reporting, testing, money, and travel. A response section covers the first twenty four hours after something goes wrong and the self reporting that changes how a positive test is handled. A hearing section covers the records to demand, the Morrissey rights to assert including confrontation, the Bearden ability to pay showing, and the disposition plan to bring. Final sections cover modification, early termination, and the termination checklist.
Criminal Defense Intake and First Appearance Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist covers the first thirty days of a criminal defense matter, where the leverage is concentrated and the evidence is perishable. It runs the intake and conflict screening, the immigration and licensing questions that must be answered before any plea discussion, the release package that determines whether the client waits at home or in custody, the preservation letters that must go out before video overwrites, the discovery and Brady demands, the criminal history audit, the suppression issue spotting from the police reports, and the speedy trial calculation. It closes with plea evaluation and sentencing mitigation checklists.
Surviving Community Supervision: A Practical Guide
This guide runs community supervision from the first meeting to the termination order. It covers the intake meeting and the questions to ask that nobody volunteers, building the compliance file that decides every later motion, handling reporting, testing, travel, and the money, what to do the day something goes wrong, how self reporting changes the response, what a modification motion should contain and when to file it, how to prepare for a revocation hearing including the ability to pay showing that Bearden requires, and how to obtain early termination, which is available far more often than it is requested.
Probation, Parole, and Supervised Release: Conditions, Violations, and Revocation
More Americans are under community supervision than are incarcerated, and supervision is now a leading pathway back into custody, mostly for conduct that is not a crime. This article explains the difference between probation, parole, and federal supervised release, where conditions come from and which ones are challengeable, why technical violations drive most revocations, what process is due at a revocation hearing after Morrissey and Gagnon, why Bearden v. Georgia forbids revoking for nonpayment without an inquiry into ability to pay, how the reduced Fourth Amendment protection of supervisees actually operates, what United States v. Haymond held about mandatory revocation penalties, and how modification, early termination, and interstate transfer work.