About US Criminal Defense

US Criminal Defense is a public legal reference. It publishes, state by state, the criminal statutes in force, the offenses those statutes define, the penalty classifications attached to them, and the terms the statutes themselves define.

Where the information comes from

Statutory text is acquired from each state's official publication channel. The Colorado library is built from the statutory database prepared by the Office of Legislative Legal Services of the Colorado General Assembly, and its statute pages are an officially sanctioned publication using the official text of the Colorado Revised Statutes. The New Jersey library is built from the statute files published by the New Jersey Legislature. This site is not the official statutes of any state, and it does not republish annotations or editorial material from any state's annotated code.

How facts are verified

Every legal assertion on this site is recorded with the statutory provisions that support it and the sources used to check it. Penalty figures are published only from structured records tied to the statute that imposes them. Facts that cannot be verified are not asserted. The site currently maintains 53735 citations to official and independent legal sources and 16830 individually verified legal claims.

Currency

Each statute page states the legislative session its text is current through. Where a section has been amended with a future effective date, the page says so. Externally sourced facts such as court information carry scheduled re-verification.

The firm directory

Alongside the statutory reference, this site maintains a directory of the criminal-defense firms that practice in each county. A firm marked as verified has had its bar license and good standing checked against the state bar's own records and is confirmed to primarily practice criminal defense; the Trusted mark additionally reflects a published client-review standard. Unclaimed listings are shown as unverified until the firm claims and verifies them. Firms that pay for a Trusted or Authority listing never appear on the statute, charge, or concept pages — that separation keeps the reference neutral, and a listing is disclosed as attorney advertising, never presented as an endorsement.

What this site is not

Nothing on this site is legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. It describes what the law says; it cannot say how the law applies to a particular person or case.