It goes without saying that having a fair jury matters in a criminal trial in Minnesota. That said, that doesn’t always mean that it happens. Picking a fair trial, sometimes called jury selection, sometimes called voir dire, is a lot more complicated than people may realize. Consider, what happens when somebody isn’t completely forthcoming during questioning? What happens if they downright lie in order to get on that jury. Worse, what happens when they get on the jury with the intention of driving the verdict one direction or another. If you are facing a jury trial, you need to sit down with an experienced criminal defense attorney here in Minnesota who has done this before, a lot.

“If your jury is unfair or against you before you even start, it almost doesn’t matter what you present or how you present it. It may be the single most important issue.”

Jack Rice appears on AM 950 in Minneapolis with Matt McNeil on April 29, 2022, to discuss the Derek Chauvin case and their recent decision to appeal their conviction. It is a big deal and several of the arguments they are making involve unfair jurors or unfair influence on those juries themselves.

If you are facing criminal charges in Minnesota, you have the right to have a jury trial. Make sure that you sit down with an experienced Minnesota criminal defense attorney to talk about what that means. Jack Rice is a Board Certified Criminal Law Specialist, a former prosecutor, a former U.S. Federal Agent and Founder of Jack Rice Defense. Contact Jack Rice Defense for a free confidential constultation or call 651-447-7650 or 612-227-1339.

Four men were charged with planning to kidnap the sitting Governor of Michigan. If the stories were to be believed, the four men planned to kidnap the Governor at her vacation home on an island, blow up the bridge to slow authorities and then either murder her by hanging up by dropping her in the middle of Lake Michigan. Two of those men were found not guilty and the other two had hung juries.

Jack appears on AM 950 in Minneapolis to discuss the trial and why things turned out as they did. In the end, it was a question of venue as well as a general credibility problem for law enforcement. The trial took place on Grand Rapids, Michigan which is generally far more conservative and the alleged motivation behind the plans was political in nature. This venue was exactly the kind of community that the defense wanted in order to present their case. Even further, the generally decline in the credibility of law enforcement has impacted many criminal trials across the country, both left and right.

Jack Rice is a former prosecutor, Board Certified Criminal Law Specialist and founder of Jack Rice Defense. If you are facing serious criminal charges in Minnesota, contact Jack Rice Defense for a free confidential consultation or call 651-447-7650 or 612-227-1339.

Police have again provided false information about “violent suspects” who then end up dead. This absolutely happened in the George Floyd case. It happened again this weekend in Uptown after a man was shot and authorities claimed the person was a murder suspect. He was not.

The police have a very real credibility problem here in the Twin Cities and across the country. It seems clear that they lie was it strikes their fancy or until somebody introduces a video camera to contradict the statements.

I appear on Am 950 in Minneapolis with Matt McNeil to discuss the criminal justice system, credibility and what happens when the police lie. This will be a early interesting conversation.

Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murder in a Minnesota State courtroom. Now, the Feds have stepped in and charged Derek Chauvin along with several of the other officers with federal criminal charges including excessive force and violating the civil rights of George Floyd. Chauvin also faces separate federal charges for a 2017 incident involving a similar restraint against a 14 year old boy.

While it has pretty rare for the Feds to come in in cases like these, it does happen. It happened in the Rodney King case back in 1991. It happened in Charlottesville, VA where a bunch of white supremacists were gathering and a woman was killed a couple of years ago. It has happened in other places. To be successful at trial, the Feds must prove that Chauvin acted willfully to deprive Floyd of his civil rights and that the use of force was Constitutionally unreasonable.

Jack will appear on Matt McNeil on AM 950 to discuss this, the aftermath of the Chauvin trial, and what is to come in the next trials. Should be fun.

Jack Rice is the founder of Jack Rice Defense, a criminal defense firm located in Minnesota. He is a former prosecutor, a Board Certified Criminal Law Specialist, and a criminal defense attorney. If you are facing serious criminal charges, contact Jack Rice Defense for a free confidential consultation.

Race and the criminal justice system. Of course they are intertwined. Of course one impacts another just as surely as race sadly impacts the rest of life. How people see each other, how they see themselves, how they see crime, how they see what they think criminals looks like all impacts how they behave. And, and importantly, this absolutely impacts how they will decide. In this case, I am with Matt McNeil on AM 950 in Minneapolis as we discuss the Derek Chauvin murder trial.

A really amazing conversation.

"Nobody saw this coming." This is the lie that must be refuted from the rooftops after the insurrection in Washington DC. This is exactly what we saw coming. You can't incite violence again and again for years, promote objective lies, call fellow American with whom you disagree traitors and cowards, promote the Proud Boys and White Supremacists along the way, invite them all to Washington DC to "get wild", rile them up, send them to the Capitol to get tough, and then when they do exactly that, say, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously stripped away from great patriots . . .” We all saw this coming. And Trump didn't do this alone.

I appear on AM 950 in Minneapolis with Matthew McNeil at 4:30 p.m. today to discuss the 25th Amendment.

This has been quite a journey. For the last six months, Attorney Willow Anderson and I have been working on Mike Forcia’s case, pro bono. He was charged with felony criminal damage to property for pulling down the statue of Christopher Columbus in front of the Capitol in St. Paul on June 10, 2020.

In that time, we have been working on a restorative justice and even a transformative justice model to address what happened, how it impacted various communities and how to address the harm of pulling down the statue and even the harm that putting the statue up had on other people. This is not simple and absolutely does not fit into a soundbite.

We appeared or were referenced on KARE 11, Fox 9, WCCO Radio, Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, MPR are more following the hearing before Chief Judge Leonardo Castro in Ramsey County. Today, Judge Castro accepted agreement that will insure that Mr. Forcia’s case will be dismissed outright in the event that he does 100 hours of community service doing restorative justice and he writes a letter addressing the harm caused. To help make this happen has been nothing short of an honor for both of us.

It has been extraordinary and Ms. Anderson and I will certainly see this as a career highlight for both of us.