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Capital Defense Weekly 
Covering Capital Defense
Post Frequency: 17.8/day Last Entry: March 28, 2011 at 23:29:51 Recent Entries: 1052
By Karl R. Keys, Esq.
Go to Capital Defense Weekly, find other Criminal Law blogs, or browse all law blogs.
email edition now available
Posted on March 16, 2008The email edition is now available: Several favorable opinions are noted this edition, at least two of which are notable. The easiest way of explaining the Third Circuit’s opinion William Holland v. Horn is that relief was granted on the basis of counsel?s failure to ask for expert assistance (Ake v...
New scholarship
Posted on March 16, 2008In prepping the weekly roundup I’ve spotted several new articles over at SSRN of potential interest: Cara Drinna’s, The Revitalization of AKE: A Capital Defendant’s Right to Expert Assistance, Oklahoma Law Review, Vol. 60, No. 2, 2007; Ryan PatrickAlford ’s, “Catalyzing More Adequate Federal Habeas Review of Summation Misconduct: Persuasion Theory and the Sixth Amendment [...
Troy Davis update & live blogging
Posted on March 16, 2008The Georgia Supreme Court is expected to rule in the latest attempts by Troy Davis to obtain justice on Monday @ 8:30 am. A summary of the decision will be available at http://www.gasupreme.us/op_summaries/Mar_17.pdf & the actual opinion is likely to be at http://www...
Notes from all over
Posted on March 13, 2008Quick wrap of what’s making news: Eyewitness ID reform is ongoing in Kentucky. The Innocence Project’s Blog notes the reforms include: - the blind administration of the eyewitness identification procedure; - the provision of instructions to the eyewitness; - the appropriate selection of non-suspec photographs/individuals; - taking confidence statements upon identification; - the video-recording of the entire procedure; and - the sequential [...
Life after death: a verdict in the first post-abolition but formerly capital trial in Jersey
Posted on March 13, 2008When New Jersey abolished the death penalty in late 2007 there were a fair number of cases lined up for trial in that state’s version of the death belt. Today, in the first of those trials to reach verdict, a jury convicted James Vaughn. Under the Garden State’s sentencing law Vaughn [...
A good week gets better
Posted on March 12, 2008Two favorable decision out of Texas, one on Penry & one on Atkins. These opinions make the fourth & fifth opinions spotted so far this week, with Florida & Pennsylvania believed likely to weigh in Thursday Ex Parte Mark Roberston, No...
kinda kewl — case summaries for Penn. cases
Posted on March 12, 2008The Allegheny Public Defender has made available caselaw summaries for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision since 2005. The summaries are here & are searchable! One of the other reasons I really like this tool is that it is yet another example of doing more with less, and stretching the taxpayer’s dollar to returns dollars [...
from the feeds
Posted on March 12, 2008Here is what I thought I liked from today’s RSS feeds: The Legal Reader note: “Got time to kill? How Appealing recently pointed me to Bryan Garner’s interviews with eight-out-of-nine sitting Supreme Court justices regarding their tips on written and oral advocacy...
Trifecta
Posted on March 11, 2008Three wins noted, one out of the 11th Circuit, one out of Cali & one out of Tennessee, and its only Tuesday. More to follow shortly.
As Curtis Sliwa would say…
Posted on March 11, 2008Do yourself a solid and sometime this week visit one of these four great sites who don’t get enough attention here: A Public Defender d e a t h p e n a l t y: open access research || cases and materials Death Watch North Carolina Justice Gambit Simple Justice I would be remiss in not noting that [...
ummm, scheduling issues
Posted on March 10, 2008My schedule is in meltdown mode of late. Others are covering stories that should have been covered here. Some of those stories from Monday include: The New York Times discusses why there are so many federal capital prosecutions in the NYC area and so few death verdicts: In the 20 years since the federal death [...
just below the radar
Posted on March 09, 2008A few stories peroclating here that may or may not making it to their own post(s): I’m still sorting through one of what appears to be two favorable decisions from this week, William Holland v. Horn, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 4816 (3rd Cir 3/6/2008)...
China: more friendly to capital appeals than either the California Supreme Court or the Fourth Circuit
Posted on March 09, 2008BBC News & Agence France-Press note on Sunday that China reverses about one in seven capital cases. Anyone remember the last capital case the Fourth Circuit or even the California Supreme Court reversed?
spring cleaning
Posted on March 09, 2008Daylights savings time weekend seems like an awful good time to do some spring cleaning around here. In the coming days, unless I hear to many objections, I’ll be taking off line most, if not all, of the State v. Kobe Bryant, People v. Scott Peterson, & USA v...
More on Holland v. Horn
Posted on March 09, 2008Looking a little further at William Holland v. Horn, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 4816 (3rd Cir 3/6/2008), the easiest way of explaining the opinion is that relief was granted on the basis of counsel’s failure to ask for expert assistance (Ake v. Oklahoma) in the penalty phase but not the guilt phase...
email edition
Posted on March 09, 2008This week’s email edition is now available here: This edition notes three appellate “defense wins” for the week of February 25 to March 3, 2008 and no unusually notable losses. The Sixth Circuit, relying on a fairly complex set of facts, holds double jeopardy bars the State from challenging a pre-Atkins [...
Interesting ethics opinion out of Texas
Posted on March 08, 2008The problem is unusually routine PD land. Client A fingers client B. The answer as to what should be done and the ethics involved took a recent interesting turn, at least in Texas. An opinion from the Professional Ethics Committee of the State Bar of Texas appearing in the March 2008 issue of the [...
Politics of death
Posted on March 06, 2008The politics of death, the Boshington corridor edition: A new study in Maryland shows that the death penalty costs Md. more than life term, indeed, 37 million per execution. The Baltimore Sun notes, “The death penalty has cost Maryland taxpayers at least $186 million more in prosecuting and defending capital murder cases over two decades than [...
Yeah, that’s right, pigs flying so high it’s closer to pigs in space — Texas style
Posted on March 06, 2008The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals remanded Wednesday in Ex Parte Larry Swearingen, WR-53,613-05, for further proceedings with directions Applicant’s claims five and six allege that the State withheld material, exculpatory evidence and knowingly sponsored false testimony...
New Scholarship
Posted on March 05, 2008Three great new academic pieces on criminal justice reform noted as SSRN: Jules Epstein’s The Great Engine that Couldn’t: Science, Mistaken Identifications, and the Limits of Cross-Examination, (to appear in the Stetson Law Review, Vol. 36, No...
Proving error in Mississippi
Posted on March 05, 2008The Innocence Project today launched the next salvo in the war to clear those that Medical Examiner Steven Hayne may have wrongfully convicted, including those he helped in sending to death row. From the Innocence Project blog: The Innocence Project today sent formal requests to nearly two dozen Mississippi officials, requesting documents that will show how [...
Does the death penalty encourage plea agreements?
Posted on March 05, 2008Does the death penalty encourage plea agreements? Just as wrapping one’s self in the flag is considered to be the last refuge if the scoundrel, the argument that the death penalty encourage plea agreements (and thus foregoes the agony of a victim’s family member of a trial) appears to be the last refuge for the [...
Tweaking lethal injection: new scholarship
Posted on March 05, 2008Ty Alper’s What Do Lawyers Know About Lethal Injection?, 1 HARV. L. & POL?Y REV. (Online) (March 3, 2008) examines one of the mystifying questions in lethal injection litigation, WHY haven’t states simply changed their procedures? Alper’s work looks at one small piece of that puzzle, how states have attempted to use the attorney-client privilege, [...
The nation?s most inaccurate murder prosecutor redux
Posted on March 04, 2008A few days ago in this post, I talked about arguably the lamest prosecutor in the nation, District Attorney Forrest Allgood whose district covers Clay, Lowndes, Noxubee, and Oktibbeha counties. In the litany of cases I missed an important one, a capital exoneration, that of Sabrina Butle: Allgood was also the prosecutor in the case [...
Baze & Medellin
Posted on March 03, 2008The two big capital cases of the term, Baze (lethal injection) and Medellin (Presidential powers, foreign relations, and federalism), weren’t decided again this week. The SCOTUS heard oral arguments in Medellin in October. The Court heard Baze over two months ago...
A win in Iraq
Posted on March 02, 2008We’ve followed the saga of Mohammad Munaf, an American citizen condemned to death in Iraq. On Friday his conviction was reversed & it is unclear what will happen to Munaf now. From Jurist: An Iraqi appeals court on Friday overturned the conviction and death sentence of Mohammad Munaf, a US citizen and former translator charged with orchestrating the kidnapping of three Romanian journalists held for 55 days in Iraq in 2005...
AG Gonzales’ capital prosecutions: a federal judge reacts
Posted on March 02, 2008Attorney General Gonzales aggressively pursued capital charging decisions where prudence suggested a capital verdict. One of those cases was that of Humberto Pepin Taveras who confessed to two narcotics related murders that occurred well more than a decade ago in the New York area...
weekly email edition
Posted on March 02, 2008This week’s email edition is now available. Please note my sincerest apologies, a draft copy of the email was mailed this week in error. The introduction should have read: From the [corrected] introduction: My sincerest apologies, a draft copy of the email was mailed ths week in error...
The nation’s most inaccurate murder prosecutor?
Posted on March 01, 2008District Attorney Forrest Allgood oversees a fairly small prosecutor’s office; his office has just five attorneys covering four counties. Allgood has now convicted at least three people of murders they didn’t commit in three separate homicides...
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My fiance's check is DD into a local credit union. Bank seems to have a pattern of "invisibly holding" charges from the debit card until just HOURS before his DD is processed (and this is after hours, of course). Over th
Have your fiance take the information you've collected and go into the bank...
what are the proper and legal steps to dissolve a partnership in an ongoing farm business?
I would say that the final tax forms are dispersed for that year with the indica...
It is my understanding that the 6th Amendment requires, that if you can't afford a lawyer in a criminal case, the Court must provide a lawyer in your defense at no charge to you. However, in a civil case no such protecti
That is not entirely true, even in the case of criminal cases. The court will pr...
Attorney welt, weinberg & reis co....from pittsburgh are collecting a credit card debt from capital one can they force me to send them a list of my assets for sheriffs sale
No! Only a Judge can make you do that and that is only after you have your day i...
I was called to give a deposition for the defense and the defendant is the person who stole our car, there is a chance that I will be called to satisfy at his trial. How can I get out of this, as my husband is to testify
If you were subpoenaed for the deposition you will need to appear or face prosec...
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