Criminal Defense
The canard of “I will never forget that face”
Imagine the dissonance felt by the victim of a serious crime not to be able to identify the perpetrator. If the perpetrator is not found and convicted, the victim may feel that the victim has been let down, the police have been let down, the...
The dissent gets it right in Supreme Court’s latest speedy trial decision
The United States Supreme Court ordinarily rejects criminal cases for review absent a material split of opinions in the state appellate courts, federal appellate courts, or both, unless the Court finds a compelling Constitutional question to justify review nonetheless. Apparently intended as a pre-emptive ruling...
Preserve the right to be let alone
NOTE: The current version of this blog entry constitutes a substantial rewrite of my original blog entry from earlier this morning, after I more closely read and sifted through the Fourth Circuit’s Whorley decision discussed below. Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 (1969), was one of...
Cops are not permitted to make up law as they go along
Cops can get touchy about suspects who put their hands in their pockets, lest they have a weapon in there. Imagine if cops were permitted to conduct searches on a hunch, just to increase their safety more, and to decimate individual liberty more in the...
Apprendi and safety valve sentencing
Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. MI). Imagine pleading guilty when facing a high risk of a three-strikes non-parolable life term in prison. Why enter such a guilty plea unless such an approach is one’s only realistic hope not to die in prison,...
The jury is the thing. Petty offenses are the barrier
Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Yesterday I blogged on a recent marijuana bench trial victory in federal magistrates court. In my view, however, it is unconstitutional — absent the clear and informed consent of the criminal defendant on the record in court — to expose...
Judges: The Exclusionary Rule must even cover the countless police errors resulting from an overgrown criminal justice system
To my knowledge, when they were lawyers, no current Supreme Court justice prosecuted nor defended criminal cases in trial court, and none of them were police. Probably with few or no exceptions, the sitting justices’ law clerks are chosen not for previous law clerking experience...
Forfeiting confrontation rights through wrongdoing
Last June, the United States Supreme Court determined that Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004) strictly limits prosecutors’ ability to present to the jury a homicide victim’s testimonial hearsay, even though the victim could have testified at trial had his or her killing not been...
To hell with annotations
Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). When I started law school in 1986. my legal research class included researching weighty tomes with such titles as Supreme Court Digest, F.2d Digest, and A.2d Digest, which used key numbers to find various categories and...
Same court; two actors; two different appeal bond results
Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Wesley Snipes and Paul Little (a.k.a. Max Hardcore) both are actors — very different actors, at that — Â with pending federal criminal appeals from the Middle District of Florida. Their similarities end there both with the...