We’ve all heard it on TV: “You have the right to remain silent…” But most people misunderstand entirely what Miranda rights actually mean. In this video, I break down the Top Miranda Rights Myths that could cost you in the real world.
🚨 Learn the truth about:
~Do police always have to read Miranda at arrest? ~Does your case get thrown out if they don’t? ~Can silence alone protect you? ~What happens if you talk before the warning? ~Do Miranda rights apply everywhere?
By the end, you’ll know what Miranda really protects — and what it doesn’t.
👨⚖️ Welcome to LAWSTACHE — where we make criminal law clear, simple, and even a little entertaining. Subscribe for more breakdowns of famous cases, courtroom myths, and criminal defense strategies.
Based in San Diego, CA Licensed: California, Nevada, and Federal Courts
The San Diego-based business litigation and criminal defense attorneys at LAWSTACHE™ LAW FIRM are experienced and dedicated professionals singularly focused on one goal: achieving the best results for our clients. Through our hard work and expertise, we guarantee all of our clients that we will diligently protect their rights and zealously pursue justice. Our clients deserve nothing less!
In this video, we break down the California Court of Appeal’s August 2025 decision in People v. Harlow, a case that redefines how courts handle mental health diversion under Penal Code § 1001.36.
🔎 What you’ll learn in this video:
~The story behind People v. Harlow and why the trial court denied diversion ~How the 2022 amendment to Penal Code 1001.36 changed the rules ~The difference between eligibility vs. suitability for diversion ~Why the Court of Appeal said a diagnosis made three years after the crime still counts
What this ruling means for defendants, lawyers, and the future of mental health in California criminal courts
⚖️ This case is a major win for those fighting for treatment over punishment. It shows how California law is shifting to prioritize rehabilitation instead of incarceration when mental illness plays a role in criminal behavior.
👉 Question for you: Do you think a late diagnosis should still qualify someone for diversion? Drop your thoughts in the comments!
Based in San Diego, CA Licensed: California, Nevada, and Federal Courts
The San Diego-based business litigation and criminal defense attorneys at LAWSTACHE™ LAW FIRM are experienced and dedicated professionals singularly focused on one goal: achieving the best results for our clients. Through our hard work and expertise, we guarantee all of our clients that we will diligently protect their rights and zealously pursue justice. Our clients deserve nothing less!
The California Court of Appeal just delivered a major decision in Muñoz v. Regents (Aug. 5, 2025) — ruling that the University of California’s policy banning undocumented students without federal work permits from campus jobs violates California law.
In this video, I break down:
~What this case is about ~Why UC’s “risk management” defense failed ~How California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) protects workers based on immigration status ~The potential impact on universities and undocumented students statewide
Whether you’re a law student, an attorney, or just someone interested in immigration and employment rights, this case could set a powerful precedent for how institutions must treat undocumented students under California law.
Based in San Diego, CA Licensed: California, Nevada, and Federal Courts
The San Diego-based business litigation and criminal defense attorneys at LAWSTACHE™ LAW FIRM are experienced and dedicated professionals singularly focused on one goal: achieving the best results for our clients. Through our hard work and expertise, we guarantee all of our clients that we will diligently protect their rights and zealously pursue justice. Our clients deserve nothing less!
Can a misdemeanor conviction really strip you of your Second Amendment rights? In this video, we break down the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ major decision in United States v. Michael Blake DeFrance (No. 23-2409), where the court reversed a federal conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9) — the law that prohibits firearm possession after a domestic violence misdemeanor.
You’ll learn: ~What § 922(g)(9) actually says ~Why the court ruled Montana’s DV statute was overbroad ~How this decision could impact future gun rights and domestic violence cases ~What this means for Second Amendment law post-Bruen
Whether you’re a gun owner or just curious about federal firearms law, this case is one to watch.
🔔 Subscribe for more breakdowns of federal cases, constitutional rights, and criminal defense insights. 👍 Like the video if you found it helpful 💬 Comment below — Should misdemeanors affect gun ownership?
Based in San Diego, CA Licensed: California, Nevada, and Federal Courts
The San Diego-based business litigation and criminal defense attorneys at LAWSTACHE™ LAW FIRM are experienced and dedicated professionals singularly focused on one goal: achieving the best results for our clients. Through our hard work and expertise, we guarantee all of our clients that we will diligently protect their rights and zealously pursue justice. Our clients deserve nothing less!
Neither the holding nor logic of Cady justifies such warrantless searches and seizures in the home. Cady held that a warrantless search of an impounded vehicle for an unsecured firearm did not violate the Fourth Amendment. In reaching this conclusion, the Court noted that the officers who patrol the “public highways” are often called to discharge noncriminal “community caretaking functions,” such as responding to disabled vehicles or investigating accidents. 413 U. S., at 441. But searches of vehicles and homes are constitutionally different, as the Cady opinion repeatedly stressed. Id., at 439, 440– 442. The very core of the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee is the right of a person to retreat into his or her home and “there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.” Florida v. Jardines, 569 U. S. 1, 6. A recognition of the existence of “community caretaking” tasks, like rendering aid to motorists in disabled vehicles, is not an open-ended license to perform them anywhere.
Based in San Diego, CA Licensed: California, Nevada, and Federal Courts
The San Diego-based business litigation and criminal defense attorneys at LAWSTACHE™ LAW FIRM are experienced and dedicated professionals singularly focused on one goal: achieving the best results for our clients. Through our hard work and expertise, we guarantee all of our clients that we will diligently protect their rights and zealously pursue justice. Our clients deserve nothing less!
The latest available data from the Justice Department show that during January 2025 the government reported 3196 new immigration prosecutions. According to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), this number is up 2.5 percent over the previous month. See the full reports here: https://tracreports.org/tracreports/bulletins/immigration/monthlyjan25/fil/ Anton Vialtsin, Esq. LAWSTACHE™ LAW FIRM … Read more
This case presents the question whether a police officer violates the Fourth Amendment by initiating an investigative traffic stop after running a vehicle’s license plate and learning that the registered owner has a revoked driver’s license.
Under this Court’s precedents, the Fourth Amendment permits an officer to initiate a brief investigative traffic stop when he has “a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity.” United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 417–418 (1981); see also Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21–22 (1968). “Although a mere ‘hunch’ does not create reasonable suspicion, the level of suspicion the standard requires is considerably less than proof of wrongdoing by a preponderance of the evidence, and obviously less than is necessary for probable cause.” Prado Navarette v. California, 572 U.S. 393, 397 (2014) (quotation altered); United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7 (1989).
Because it is a “less demanding” standard, “reasonable suspicion can be established with information that is different in quantity or content than that required to establish probable cause.” Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325, 330 (1990). The standard “depends on the factual and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent men, not legal technicians, act.” Navarette, supra, at 402 (quoting Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690, 695 (1996) (emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted)). Courts “cannot reasonably demand scientific certainty . . . where none exists.” Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 125 (2000). Rather, they must permit officers to make “commonsense judgments and inferences about human behavior.” Ibid.; see also Navarette, supra, at 403 (noting that an officer “ ‘need not rule out the possibility of innocent conduct’ ”).
Before initiating the stop, Deputy Mehrer observed an individual operating a 1995 Chevrolet 1500 pickup truck with Kansas plate 295ATJ. He also knew that the registered owner of the truck had a revoked license and that the model of the truck matched the observed vehicle. From these three facts, Deputy Mehrer drew the commonsense inference that Glover was likely the driver of the vehicle, which provided more than reasonable suspicion to initiate the stop.
The fact that the registered owner of a vehicle is not always the driver of the vehicle does not negate the reason- ableness of Deputy Mehrer’s inference. Such is the case with all reasonable inferences. The reasonable suspicion inquiry “falls considerably short” of 51% accuracy, see United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 274 (2002), for, as we have explained, “[t]o be reasonable is not to be perfect,” Heien v. North Carolina, 574 U.S. 54, 60 (2014).
Based in San Diego, CA Licensed: California, Nevada, and Federal Courts
The San Diego-based business litigation and criminal defense attorneys at LAWSTACHE™ LAW FIRM are experienced and dedicated professionals singularly focused on one goal: achieving the best results for our clients. Through our hard work and expertise, we guarantee all of our clients that we will diligently protect their rights and zealously pursue justice. Our clients deserve nothing less!
During the investigation of two traffic incidents involving an orange and black motorcycle with an extended frame, Officer David Rhodes learned that the motorcycle likely was stolen and in the possession of petitioner Ryan Collins. Officer Rhodes discovered photographs on Collins’ Facebook profile of an orange and black motorcycle parked in the driveway of a house, drove to the house, and parked on the street. From there, he could see what appeared to be the motorcycle under a white tarp parked in the same location as the motorcycle in the photograph. Without a search warrant, Office Rhodes walked to the top of the driveway, removed the tarp, confirmed that the motorcycle was stolen by running the license plate and vehicle identification numbers, took a photograph of the uncovered motorcycle, replaced the tarp, and returned to his car to wait for Collins. When Collins returned, Officer Rhodes arrested him. The trial court denied Collins’ motion to suppress the evidence on the ground that Officer Rhodes violated the Fourth Amendment when he trespassed on the house’s curtilage to conduct a search, and Collins was convicted of receiving stolen property. The Virginia Court of Appeals affirmed. The State Supreme Court also affirmed, holding that the warrantless search was justified under the Fourth Amendment’s automobile exception.
Like the automobile exception, the Fourth Amendment’s protection of curtilage has long been black letter law. “[W]hen it comes to the Fourth Amendment, the home is first among equals.” Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1, 6, 133 S.Ct. 1409, 185 L.Ed.2d 495 (2013). “At the Amendment’s ‘very core’ stands ‘the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.’ ” Ibid. (quoting Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511, 81 S.Ct. 679, 5 L.Ed.2d 734 (1961)). To give full practical effect to that right, the Court considers curtilage—“the area ‘immediately surrounding and associated with the home’ ”—to be “ ‘part of the home itself for Fourth Amendment purposes.’ ” Jardines, 569 U.S., at 6, 133 S.Ct. 1409 (quoting Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 180, 104 S.Ct. 1735, 80 L.Ed.2d 214 (1984)). “The protection afforded the curtilage is essentially a protection of families and personal privacy in an area intimately linked to *593 the home, both physically and psychologically, where privacy expectations are most heightened.” California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 212–213, 106 S.Ct. 1809, 90 L.Ed.2d 210 (1986).
The scope of the automobile exception extends no further than the automobile itself.
It does not give an officer the right to enter a home or its curtilage to access a vehicle without a warrant.
The Court has similarly declined to expand the scope of other exceptions to the warrant requirement and that logic applies equally well here.
Under the Plain View Doctrine, an officer must have lawful right of access to any contraband he discovers in plain view in order to seize it without a warrant.
Likewise, although warrantless arrests in public places are valid, an officer generally may not enter a home to make an arrest without a warrant.
So too an officer must have a lawful right of access to a vehicle in order to search it pursuant to the automobile exception.
The automobile exception itself does not afford that necessary right of access because the rationales underlying it take account only of the balance between the intrusion of an individual’s Fourth Amendment interests in his vehicle and the government’s interest in an expedient search of that vehicle.
They do not account for the distinct privacy interests in one’s home or curtilage.
The Fourth Amendment’s automobile exception does not permit a police officer without a warrant to enter private property to search a vehicle parked a few feet from the house.
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The San Diego-based business litigation and criminal defense attorneys at LAWSTACHE™ LAW FIRM are experienced and dedicated professionals singularly focused on one goal: achieving the best results for our clients. Through our hard work and expertise, we guarantee all of our clients that we will diligently protect their rights and zealously pursue justice. Our clients deserve nothing less!
Doggett v. United States, 505 U.S. 647 (1992), is a Supreme Court case addressing the right to a speedy trial under the Sixth Amendment.
Facts: Marc Doggett was indicted in 1980 for drug-related charges. Shortly after the indictment, he left the United States. While authorities knew he was in Colombia and later Panama, they failed to apprehend him due to logistical issues. In 1982, Doggett returned to the U.S. unnoticed and lived openly for the next six years. He was arrested in 1988, but during this time, he had no knowledge of the indictment.
Issue: Does an 8½-year delay between the indictment and arrest, largely due to government negligence, violate the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial?
Holding: Yes, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Doggett, holding that the delay violated his right to a speedy trial.
Reasoning: The Court applied the Barker v. Wingo (1972) balancing test, which considers:
Length of delay: The 8½-year delay was presumptively prejudicial. Reason for delay: The government was negligent in pursuing Doggett, as they could have located him with reasonable effort. Defendant’s assertion of the right: Doggett could not assert his right earlier because he was unaware of the indictment. Prejudice to the defendant: The Court presumed prejudice due to the excessive delay caused by government negligence, even without specific proof of harm to Doggett’s defense. Outcome: The Court reversed Doggett’s conviction, emphasizing that a lengthy, negligent delay by the government undermines the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right, even if the defendant cannot show concrete prejudice.
This case underscores the importance of timely prosecution and holds the government accountable for unnecessary delays in pursuing charges.
Anton Vialtsin, Esq. LAWSTACHE™ LAW FIRM | Criminal Defense and Business Law https://lawstache.com (619) 357-6677
Based in San Diego, CA Licensed: California, Nevada, and Federal Courts
The San Diego-based business litigation and criminal defense attorneys at LAWSTACHE™ LAW FIRM are experienced and dedicated professionals singularly focused on one goal: achieving the best results for our clients. Through our hard work and expertise, we guarantee all of our clients that we will diligently protect their rights and zealously pursue justice. Our clients deserve nothing less!
A police officer looked in an apartment window through a gap in the closed blind and observed respondents Carter and Johns and the apartment’s lessee bagging cocaine. After respondents were arrested, they moved to suppress, inter alia, cocaine and other evidence obtained from the apartment and their car, arguing that the officer’s initial observation was an unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Respondents were convicted of state drug offenses. The Minnesota trial court held that since they were not overnight social guests, they were not entitled to Fourth Amendment protection, and that the officer’s observation was not a search under the Amendment. The State Court of Appeals held that Carter did not have “standing” to object to the officer’s actions because the evidence indicated that he used the apartment for a business purpose—to package drugs—and, separately, affirmed Johns’ conviction without addressing the “standing” issue. In reversing, the State Supreme Court held that respondents had “standing” to claim Fourth Amendment protection because they had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the invaded place, and that the officer’s observation constituted an unreasonable search.
Held: Any search that may have occurred did not violate respondents’ Fourth Amendment rights. The state courts’ analysis of respondents’ expectation of privacy under the rubric of “standing” doctrine was expressly rejected in Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 140, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387. Rather, to claim Fourth Amendment protection, a defendant must demonstrate that he personally has an expectation of privacy in the place searched, and that his expectation is reasonable. Id., at 143–144, n. 12, 99 S.Ct. 421. The Fourth Amendment protects persons against unreasonable searches of “their persons [and] houses,” and thus indicates that it is a personal right that must be invoked by an individual. But the extent to which the Amendment protects people may depend upon where those people are. While an overnight guest may have a legitimate expectation of privacy in someone else’s home, see Minnesota v. Olson, 495 U.S. 91, 98–99, 110 S.Ct. 1684, 109 L.Ed.2d 85, one **471 who is merely present with the consent of the householder may not, see Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 259, 80 S.Ct. 725, 4 L.Ed.2d 697. And an expectation *84 of privacy in commercial property is different from, and less than, a similar expectation in a home. New York v. Burger, 482 U.S. 691, 700, 107 S.Ct. 2636, 96 L.Ed.2d 601. Here, the purely commercial nature of the transaction, the relatively short period of time that respondents were on the premises, and the lack of any previous connection between them and the householder all lead to the conclusion that their situation is closer to that of one simply permitted on the premises. Any search which may have occurred did not violate their Fourth Amendment rights. Because respondents had no legitimate expectation of privacy, the Court need not decide whether the officer’s observation constituted a “search.” Pp. 472–474.
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Based in San Diego, CA Licensed: California, Nevada, and Federal Courts
The San Diego-based business litigation and criminal defense attorneys at LAWSTACHE™ LAW FIRM are experienced and dedicated professionals singularly focused on one goal: achieving the best results for our clients. Through our hard work and expertise, we guarantee all of our clients that we will diligently protect their rights and zealously pursue justice. Our clients deserve nothing less!
