Renewed War on Drugs, harsher charging policies, stepped-up criminalization of immigrants — in the current climate, joining the NACDL is more important than ever. Members of NACDL help to support the only national organization working at all levels of government to ensure that the voice of the defense bar is heard.
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NACDL is committed to enhancing the capacity of the criminal defense bar to safeguard fundamental constitutional rights.
NACDL harnesses the unique perspectives of NACDL members to advocate for policy and practice improvements in the criminal legal system.
NACDL envisions a society where all individuals receive fair, rational, and humane treatment within the criminal legal system.
NACDL’s mission is to serve as a leader, alongside diverse coalitions, in identifying and reforming flaws and inequities in the criminal legal system, and redressing systemic racism, and ensuring that its members and others in the criminal defense bar are fully equipped to serve all accused persons at the highest level.
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This training program will aid those working to defend persons accused of homicide in drug-related overdose deaths. Each section of the program focuses on a different aspect of these cases. CLE is not available for this program.
NACDL's Domestic Drone Information Center aims to be a one-stop source of cutting-edge information on the proliferation of drones inside the United States. It collects news from leading publications across the nation; features a comprehensive listing of legislative developments; and contains sections devoted to relevant case law, government documents, scholarship, upcoming events, and data on drone usage. The Domestic Drone Information Center also aggregates existing material from other websites, making it a launching pad to additional information about domestic drones on the web.
Brief of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation as Amici Curiae in Support of Defendant’s Petition for Review
In the digital age, law enforcement is savvy enough to pull information about your client’s online presence and use it against them. Getting this data and challenging it are skills every modern defense attorney needs. This webinar covers how social media evidence can and cannot be accessed, how it’s authenticated, and viable legal arguments to use and challenge it in your own cases.
To access this content, you will have to create an NACDL account and complete a short form. You will not have to purchase a membership.
Nearly every case involves a cell phone or an online account. Laws on device and account searches are continuing to evolve, as courts reconsider old doctrines that do not fit with the realities of the digital age. Below, find sample motions on suppressing emails, passcodes, and other electronically stored information.
​​​​Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) systems are getting more sophisticated and more accessible to police. ALPRs can gather information about people and their movements, but police also use them creatively: creating associations between vehicles and identifying “suspicious” travel patterns.
This webinar from NACDL’s Fourth Amendment Center explores ALPR systems, the cases affecting law on open roads, and how to challenge this evidence in your own case.
A cell phone’s location can be detected through cell site location information (CSLI) or global positioning system (GPS) data. CSLI refers to the information collected as a cell phone identifies its location to nearby cell towers.
Amicus Brief of National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in Support of Plaintiffs-Appellees
Amicus Brief of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
For attorneys representing criminal defendants, court decisions on search and seizure often seem to overwhelmingly favor the interests of law enforcement. This document compiles over 30 years of cases in which defendants and civil rights plaintiffs have prevailed. It hopes to provide raw material for criminal defense lawyers to fashion suppression motions, based on chronology and causation, that can enforce their clients’ rights against government overreach while supporting an expansive view of the Fourth Amendment’s protections.
This comment from the Fourth Amendment Center addresses the National Institute of Standards and Technology's report "Digital Investigation Techniques: A Scientific Foundation Review."
NACDL comments to the Executive Office of the President Office of Science and Technology Policy responding to a request for information regarding the use of biometric technology.
Below are NACDL's comments on Executive Order 14074 on Advancing Effective, Accountable Policing and Criminal Justice Practices to Enhance Public Trust and Public Safety. The policing technologies at issue in the Executive Order create serious harms for individual criminal defendants, their lawyers, and the criminal legal system more broadly. In this comment, NACDL aims to highlight the serious dangers that these technologies pose and propose recommendations for mitigating those dangers.
Cell Site Simulators, also known as IMSI catchers or Stingrays, mimic cell towers and trick phones within their radius into communicating with them instead, during which they are able to collect information about the device. Using a cell site simualtor is a Fourth Amendment Search, sometimes conducted without a court order. This resource explains this technology works, their judical authorization, how to identify this evidence in a case, and how to challenge that evidence.
To identify suspects, law enforcement officers are turning increasingly to reverse search warrants, such as geofence warrants and keyword search warrants. These are searches used to find suspects and are not conducted to find evidence on a targeted individual. This trend presents novel challenges to the Fourth Amendment and privacy rights in the United States.