West Des Moines Iowa Criminal Defense Law Blog

The question of what standard should be used when placing someone on terrorism watch list is currently before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. While Iowa is in the Eighth Circuit, the ruling could be significant nationwide because much of the evidence against watch-listed people is submitted by state and local law enforcement.

Five men have sued the federal government, claiming that they have suffered adverse consequences from being on the National Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative (NSI) watch list -- a list that none of them did anything to be placed on. They contend that they were placed on the list for innocent things such as buying a computer at Best Buy, taking photos in public or being a member of the Muslim faith.

Recently, the Des Moines police became the first Iowa police department to install an in-house machine that can analyze shell casings and access a federal ballistic imaging network to identify potential matches with firearms. Now, that system has been used to match a particular handgun to shell casings found at a robbery scene. As a result, an 18-year-old Ankeny man is facing criminal charges.

Police say that without the new machine it would probably have taken between 10 and 12 months to obtain results from the state crime lab. The fast turnaround is impressive, but it doesn't change the fact that ballistics evidence has been under fire recently.

Suppose you've been drinking and had been planning to drive. Realizing you're too intoxicated to do so safely, you decide to avoid driving and sleep it off in your car. To keep warm, you start the engine, but you don't have any plans to drive. While you're asleep, the police notice you. Can they arrest you for OWI just for being in the car while intoxicated?

Unfortunately, it depends. While it's completely understandable to try to sleep off the effects of alcohol in your car, the reality is that people have been arrested for drunk driving in a situation like this one. The issue is that you may be considered to be in control of the vehicle -- and that is an element of OWI.

The First Amendment protects us from being prosecuted or persecuted by the government for what we say -- our opinions, our arguments and our rants. That said, not all speech is protected by the First Amendment. Fraud, plagiarism, defamation, perjury and solicitation to commit crimes are all examples of speech that is not protected. Also, incitement to imminent lawless action and true threats fall outside the First Amendment's protection.

Yet sometimes, threatening language is used hyperbolically or merely for the sake of argument.