Rizio and Nelson California Law Blog

Legal Issues – Caretakers

Any person who is a caretaker and commits a lewd act upon a dependent person by use of force, violence, duress, menace, or fear of immediate unlawful bodily injury on the victim or another person is guilty of a felony and shall be imprisoned in a state prison for three to eight years. Any person who commits a lewd act with sexual intent upon a child of 14 or 15 years, and is at least 10 years older...

Drug-Related Homicides

According to the Office of the Attorney General of California, the incarceration rates for drug-related crimes have been steadily on the rise. The last year recorded was 2005, which saw 39 drug-related homicides out of every 100,000 people. Alarming as this is, the high was in 1997, with 53.2 drug-related homicides. The rate had gone down to 31.4 in 2002, but began increasing again in the following...

DUI Felony Classification

Felonies are crimes that are punishable up to state prison terms. The term length is variable, depending upon the severity of the crime and the criminal record of the offender, and can be low, mid, or high term. A DUI may be a misdemeanor or a felony depending the offender’s criminal background and other variables. The California court system guides DUI convictions and punishments based on applicable...

Methamphetamine Statistics

Methamphetamines, also known as “meth” or “crystal meth”, are drugs that are quickly growing in popularity in the state of California. Among the biggest users of this drug are young women, ages 12 to 25. This should not be surprising, since the affects of meth use include increased energy levels, elevated mood, and appetite suppression. Our society has conditioned our young women to believe...

Home Invasion Legal Issues

Desperate times sometimes result in drastic actions.  Desperate times, desperate measures. That’s how the saying goes, and most of the time, we say it lightly. However, it is a sign of these difficult economic times when we see in the papers and on the news more and more crimes of theft, robbery, and home invasion. With unemployment rates still high, the chances are that many people will...

CA Gun Laws – More Confusion

According to an article posted recently on pe.com of the Press-Enterprise, new federal gun laws allow visitors to bring firearms into national parks. However, the federal law left it up to each individual state to apply the new law. The author, John Asbury, writes, “…how the new federal law will be applied in California is unclear, according to the state attorney general’s office.”...

When in trouble – know where to turn

The criminal justice system categorizes crimes by two types for statistical purposes: Part I crimes and Part II crimes. The FBI records the information in the Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Agencies that contribute to this data, such as police departments, submit the information to the FBI once a month. They write, “In 2002, law enforcement agencies active in the UCR Program represented...

Terrorism – The Importance Of A Solid Defence

The United States of America is aggressively pursuing prosecution of anyone they suspect is involved in terrorist activity. The punishments are harsh, with some states employing the death penalty in severe cases (the Timothy McVeigh case, for example). Even pranksters can find themselves in front of a jury for making criminal threats and face up to $250,000 USD and five years in a federal correctional...

Marijuana In The News

When we think about marijuana’s negative connotations, we envision prison cells for drug use, selling marijuana, growing the drug, and maybe even selling or forging prescriptions for it. There rarely come visions of wildfire when we mention the phrase “marijuana problems,” but this can actually be a major concern in the state of California. Case in point: Just this year people have...