Ohio

Friday Roundup

Posted on April 01, 2011
Siller Update.  When last we left Tom Siller, he’d just won a new trial from his aggravated murder conviction.  Long story short, (long story is here), Siller was one of three people who robbed an elderly woman’s house; in the course of the robbery, she was beaten severely...

Slippery slopes

Posted on March 31, 2011
If you’re appealing a case, there are two questions you don’t want to hear a judge asking you in oral argument:  whether if the court rules in your favor, it’ll be opening “the floodgates of litigation,” or it will be setting up a “slippery slope...

A week too long

Posted on March 30, 2011
As the Fortunes sang back in 1965, “You’ve got your troubles, I’ve got mine.”  (And through the miracle of YouTube, you can take a walk down Memory Lane and compare then with now.)  Jerome’s trouble is the drug case he picked up:  after a controlled buy of $20 worth of crack, the cops got a [...

What’s Up in the 8th

Posted on March 29, 2011
Last year, the Plain Dealer ran a series of articles claiming that County Prosecutor Bill Mason consistently pursued prosecutions that were, as they say in the appellate courts, “devoid of merit.”  As I mentioned when I discussed the articles, I didn’t find much support for the contention; in my experience, Mason’s office was no more [...

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Case Update

Posted on March 28, 2011
Most US Supreme Court watchers know that the Court has long delighted in playing smackdown with the 9th Circuit, and it did so again last week in Felkner v. Jackson.  It could hardly be faulted.  Jackson had raised several Batson challenges at trial, which were rejected on appeal through the California courts...

Friday Roundup

Posted on March 25, 2011
Sticking it to Allstate.  What’s up with car insurance companies?  It used to be that businesses chose a particular spokesman, and stuck with him (or her) until they decided to get a new one.  Progressive, for example, is doing nicely with Flo, the bubbly but incredibly annoying clerk at the big Progressive store that looks like a [...

Collateral damage

Posted on March 24, 2011
Warren Lewis was in no mood to cooperate.  The police had responded to a call of a juvenile fight involving three girls, one of them Lewis’ daughter.  They decided to charge all three, but when one officer went up to Lewis’ house and asked him for information, like the address (the house didn’t have a [...

One in the L column

Posted on March 23, 2011
They don’t call it an adversarial system of justice for nothing.  If you’re going to go to trial, you need to have confidence in your case; juries can smell doubt.  The problem, though, is that if you’re not careful you can develop more confidence than is warranted...

What’s Up in the 8th

Posted on March 22, 2011
This week, we learn that there are no hard and fast rules:  sometimes it’s better to try a case to the bench, and sometimes it’s better not to appeal at all.  The court takes another look at Arizona v. Gant, and decides the alpha and omega of plea hearings...

Case Update

Posted on March 21, 2011
No decisions by SCOTUS this past week, but a couple of interesting 4th Amendment cases on the docket for argument on Monday, one on the fruit-of-the-poisonous tree doctrine, and the other a sequel to Arizona v. Gant.  Tolentino v. New York is the former:  Tolentino was stopped by the police, and, after they ran a [...

Friday Roundup

Posted on March 18, 2011
More on child porn sentencing.  I was scheduled to start a civil trial a couple weeks back, but when I got to the courtroom, I found three TV cameras and assorted journalists in the jury box.  They weren’t for me or my case, of course; they were for the sentencing of Robert Bonness, a retired [...

Hard cases

Posted on March 17, 2011
In doing this blog, I read a lot of cases.  The downside to that is, I read a lot of cases.   It’s not at all unusual to find decisions that are result-driven:  that is, cases where obvious errors are brushed aside because of the overwhelming evidence of the defendant’s guilt...

Walking Melendez-Diaz back?

Posted on March 16, 2011
Curt Caylor and Gerry Razatos worked at the New Mexico Health Department’s Toxicology Bureau, and back in August of 2005, and when someone brought in a blood sample for Donald Bullcoming, who’d been driving a truck that rear-ended another vehicle, Caylor put it in the gas chromatograph machine and ran the test...

What’s Up in the 8th

Posted on March 15, 2011
There’s a valid argument to be made that the present law on post-release controls couldn’t be more stupid if it had actually been designed to work the way it does.  What would have happened if the Ohio Supreme Court had ruled differently in Woods v...

Case Update

Posted on March 14, 2011
Two years ago, in District Attorney v. Osborne, the Supreme Court ruled that prisoners do not have a constitutional right to access to DNA evidence which might prove their innocence.  Last week in Skinner v. Switzer, the Court opened the door they’d seemed to have slammed shut in Osborne, but ever so slightly:  the inmate [...

Friday Roundup

Posted on March 11, 2011
Gun rights update.  A few months back, I highlighted a common pleas decision here dismissing a weapons under disability charge in a case.  The disability had been based on a 1991 misdemeanor marijuana conviction, and the court ruled that disqualifying the defendant from owning a gun on that basis violated his Second Amendment right to bear [...

Right to counsel; Bodyke, continued

Posted on March 10, 2011
Tip O’Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House during the Reagan administration, once said that his most important job requirement was the ability to count to 218, which, of course, was a majority of the House.  For a lawyer arguing a case before the Ohio Supreme Court, the arithmetical challenge isn’t nearly as steep:  you [...

Walking Crawford back

Posted on March 09, 2011
In Crawford v. Washington in 2004, the Supreme Court handed down perhaps the most significant decision on the 6th Amendment’s Confrontation Clause, holding that “testimonial statements,” even if they fell within a hearsay exception, were barred at trial unless the defendant had the opportunity to cross-examine the maker of the statement...

What’s Up in the 8th

Posted on March 08, 2011
The State pushes the envelope of the 4th Amendment, and the court pushes back.  We get Biblical this week, and follow the Psalm in noting that for everything there is a season:  a time for war, a time for peace, a time for raising speedy trial issues or filing a motion to vacate a judgment...

Case Update

Posted on March 07, 2011
Busy week for the Supreme Court.  The one in DC, that is.  In addition to the big decision in Michigan v. Bryant on the scope of Crawford v. Washington, which we’ll discuss on Wednesday, there were a spate of other decisions as well.  In Pepper v...

A Man’s Best Friend

Posted on March 04, 2011
The state highway patrolman spots the car with Michigan plates eastbound on the Ohio Turnpike.  He sees the car change lanes without putting on its turn signal, so that’s enough for a stop.  Talking to the driver and checking his license takes a little while, and the cop draws it out so that the other officer, the one [...

Other acts

Posted on March 03, 2011
There are few things more vexing for defense attorneys, especially in child sex cases, than “other acts” testimony under EvidR 404(B).  You have a hard enough time explaining to the jury why some 12-year-0ld is claiming that your client made her do nasty things, and then the prosecutor puts on another 12-year-old to say that your [...

Unlucky punch

Posted on March 02, 2011
Branch Rickey famously observed that luck is the residue of design, so it may be that bad luck is the residue of lack of design.  Walter Triplett, Jr. didn’t have a lot of luck growing up on the streets of Cleveland, but he didn’t do much to improve it...

What’s Up in the 8th

Posted on March 01, 2011
Criminal defendants live large this week, winning three of fourteen felony cases.  Yes, I know that doesn’t sound like a big deal, but considering that was the total for the previous three weeks combined, it is.  And while rarely a week goes by that some decision or another from the 8th causes me to furrow [...

Case Update

Posted on February 28, 2011
Well, that was quick.  It can take a while for the Ohio Supreme Court to issue a decision after oral argument; I’ve seen it go as long as a year and a half.  Barely more than a month ago, the court heard oral argument in State v. Ford, involving the issue of whether a firearms [...

Friday Roundup

Posted on February 25, 2011
Getting an edge.  Athletes are notorious for superstitions and performing certain rites.  Basketball players will bounce a ball the same number of times before a free throw.  University of Georgia field goal kicker Blair Walsh eats a miniature box of Raisin Bran in the locker room before every game...

State’s Rights

Posted on February 24, 2011
Carole Anne Bond was pissed.  Oh sure, she was initially happy that her best friend was pregnant, despite the fact that she herself couldn’t conceive, but her joy ended when she found out that her own husband was the child’s father.  Instead of living life as a cliche, however, Carole decided to get even:  she took [...

Open discovery and expert witnesses

Posted on February 23, 2011
Your client’s charged with aggravated vehicular homicide and hit/skip, accused of driving drunk and running down a kid on his bike, and then leaving the scene.  The first charge goes nowhere — your client’s BAC was less than a fifth of the legal limit – the judge finds neither recklessness nor negligence, and 29′s that one...

What’s Up in the 8th

Posted on February 22, 2011
Milestone alert:  This is the 100th post I’ve written entitled “What’s Up in the 8th.”  I posted my first one back on September 30, 2008, but called it “8th District Roundup” for a while after that for some reason.  This is so much better...

Case Update

Posted on February 21, 2011
SCOTUS swings back into action this week, with oral argument in three criminal cases, one of which, Bond v. U.S., addresses the increasing practice of making a Federal crime out of offenses which normally fall within the purview of the states.  The significance of the case is somewhat muted:  the only issue it raises is [...

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