Gallagher Criminal Defense

09/02/2026

In the news: With the jury's verdict in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts woman charged with killing her three children, are you curious about how Minnesota's insanity defense works? My explainer:

Exploring mental illness defenses in criminal cases, including the insanity defense, psychiatric defense and Rule 20 in Minnesota.

08/27/2026

What are Public Order crimes? They include victimless, consensual & crimes that disrupt police.
- Mala prohibitum - crimes by statute not moral consensus.
- Examples include disorderly conduct, resisting police, drugs.
Defenses & more in my explainer:

Public Order Crimes include victimless crimes, consensual crimes, vice crimes & crimes that interfere with police & courts. The defense view.

08/24/2026

Minnesota does not have an "inciting a riot" criminal statute. Instead, participating in a riot is prosecuted under Minnesota Statutes § 609.71, which defines degrees of riot based on actions and weapons, alongside related criminal charges like unlawful assembly. But First Amendment rights protect speech. Self-defense may also be an available defense in a riot. My explainer:

Riot Attorney Thomas Gallagher's guide to Minnesota riot law, charges, defenses; including Minnesota Statutes §609.71, weapons, self-defense.

08/11/2026

Today's agenda: A case where my guy reports a possibly lost firearm (in home or outdoors) to local police, who then charge him with a crime "negligent storage where a child likely to access." But no gun, no child.

These Police want you to know that if you report a lost or stolen firearm they will charge you with a crime.

Facing a charge of Negligent Storage of a Firearm in Minnesota? How to defend against a gun storage charge with an expert defense lawyer.

08/07/2026

Presumed innocent? Yes.

PBSO deputy reprimanded after ticketing one-armed driver for alleged texting while driving

A Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office deputy has been disciplined for an incident that made headlines around the country several months ago.According to a summar

07/29/2026

In the news: Minnesota Disorderly Conduct law is in the news this week. Normally words alone are not enough for a crime; have free speech protection. But "fighting words" can be an exception. More deets from Attorney Thomas Gallagher here:

Defending against disorderly conduct 609.72 charges: assert your rights, consult an attorney. Avoid creating evidence prosecutors can twist.

07/27/2026

Countermeasure tech: US accuses American of allegedly wiping his phone using a ‘duress’ password during border search.

A U.S. citizen has asked a court to throw out the government's claim that he gave over a passcode to border authorities that wiped his phone's data, opening up fresh questions about a person's constitutional rights at the U.S. border.

07/27/2026

Can a law-abiding citizen face felony Assault 2 charges in Minnesota, because someone "saw a gun?" Make sure it doesn't happen to you. Know the law, avoid the trouble. Find out how in this article on the Gallagher Criminal Defense blog:

Brandishing assault charges, intent and self-defense in Minnesota. Attorney Thomas Gallagher's guide to your legal readiness.

07/09/2026

American jury powers have massively declined, shifting from jurors holding near-absolute authority to one strictly regulated by judges. At the nation's founding juries were the "popular branch of the judiciary, expected to check government overreach.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, American juries had the "right" to judge both the facts of the case and the law. Jurors could openly ignore a judge's interpretation of a law.

Throughout the 1800s, the legal elite pushed for predictability and uniformity in commerce and criminal justice. Then the U.S. Supreme Court declared in the 1895 case Sparf v. United States that jurors, who have the "power" to nullify the law in rendering a general verdict, can also be kept ignorant of their power of nullification.

Nevertheless even in their diminished, leashed state American juries can prevent a conviction or unanimously acquit regardless of the law or facts, despite the efforts of the elites to prevent them from knowing their remaining power to veto injustice.

The jury trial process explained by Criminal Jury Trial Attorney Thomas Gallagher. Explore the law and procedures required for a fair trial.

07/04/2026

"Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First, a right to life; secondly to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.

All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please. And in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another.

When men enter into society, it is by voluntary consent; and they have a right to demand and insist upon the performance of such conditions, and previous limitations as form an equitable original compact.

Every natural right not expressly given up or from the nature of a social compact necessarily ceded remains.

All positive and civil laws, should conform as far as possible, to the law of natural reason and equity. ....

'The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man; but only to have the law of nature for his rule.' [John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Thomas Hollis (London: A. Millar et al., 1764), 212.]

…In short it is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one or any number of men, at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights, when the great end of civil government from the very nature of its institution is for the support, protection, and defense of those very rights: the principal of which… are life, liberty, and property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce and give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the great end of society, would absolutely vacate such renunciation; the right to freedom being the gift of God almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift, and voluntarily become a slave. ..."

https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-rights-of-the-colonists/