William H. Buckman Law Firm

Monday, September 21st, 2009 “Consent “is a threadbare fiction which should be eliminated from highway or pedestrian searches. No traveler with a choice wants to be detained for the minutes or hours that searches consume. No one wants the humiliation and spectacle that attaches to the process while he or she sits on the hood [...]

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 New Jersey so often pats itself on the back as a “progressive” state. It’s not, particularly in the area of criminal justice issues, especially drug related issues. On drug policy, New Jersey leads the way in draconian sentencing schemes and obsolete thinking. Somehow the weight of this system is also placed [...]

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 “There are more African Americans under correctional control today in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.” ”As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment [...]

  Thursday, June 13th, 2011 There are currently close to two million American citizens behind bars. This number is unsettling, even under the assumption that the entire two million are truly guilty of the crimes for which they have been convicted and incarcerated. But what if there was one of them, just one, who was [...]

Wednesday, march 2nd, 2011 I have practiced criminal law for over 30 years. I am still mystified as to why people under investigation speak to police. To try to help my clients I have placed on the back of my card the following: My lawyer has told me not to talk to anyone about my case, [...]

Monday, July 11th, 2011 From Freedom is Green - maybe a breath of fresh air for New Jersey’s present draconian posture.  NJ Legislators Support New Marijuana Decrim Bill by Chris Goldstein The Garden State is joining the national discussion about changing marijuana laws. A bi-partisan bill to remove criminal penalties for adults in possession of a small amount of [...]

Wednesday, July 13th, 2011  I wanted to re-run this piece in The Press of Atlantic City by Jack Cole which points out that even law enforcement recognizes the failure of marijuana criminalization. New Jersey Should Fight Crime by Decriminalizing Marijuana by Jack Cole As a former undercover narcotics detective with the New Jersey State Police, I might [...]

Saturday, September 24th, 2011 Another example of the advice that one should not speak to police is particularly apt for people who may be suspected of growing marijuana. Euphemistically, here in NJ, police call one of their particular marijuana related operations a “knock and Talk.” The operation is anything but. When police suspect that marijuana [...]

by Josh Dratel The war on civilian privacy has escalated. Recently, Congress the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, which allows for the commercial use of surveillance drones in the United States. And in late March, the Obama administration revised guidelines with respect to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center’s retention of data on law-abiding persons. [...]