Ohio

Road Warrior

Posted on April 23, 2008
Travel day for yours truly; I’m off to Cincinnati for an oral argument before the 6th Circuit.  I’m representing one of fourteen defendants, members of the Outlaw Motorcycle Club, who were tried back in 2004 on various RICO, drug, and gun charges...

Three from the 8th

Posted on April 22, 2008
If you didn’t see the Case Update when you checked here yesterday morning, it’s posted below.  I screwed up and set it to show up at 7:40 in the evening instead of 7:40 in the morning, and didn’t catch it until noon. Since most of my readers are from Cuyahoga County (the other one’s in Cincinnati), [...

Case Update

Posted on April 21, 2008
Busy time for the Nine in DC.  The Supreme Court affirms lethal injection as a method of executing people, which will come in handy if it decides that child rape can be punished by death; it had the argument on that last week.  It also had two rulings on the armed career criminal act, which [...

Friday round-up

Posted on April 18, 2008
I lied again.  Turns out that my 500th post wasn’t last Thursday, like I said, but on Monday.  Oh, well, one of the reasons I went to law school is they promised there wouldn’t be any math. Speaking of reasons I went to law school, I recommended my blog to another lawyer who does a good bit of [...

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Vindictiveness and resentencing

Posted on April 17, 2008
In 1998, Kelli Garrett was convicted of aggravated robbery and kidnapping, with various firearms specifications.  The judge gave her 39 years in prison.  She caught a break, though; her sentence was eventually vacated because of Foster, and back she went to be resentenced...

Death penalty and child rape

Posted on April 16, 2008
As I mentioned on Monday, the US Supreme Court’s holding oral argument this week in Kennedy v. Louisiana, which presents the issue of the constitutionality of imposing the death penalty for child rape.  The case would seem to be dictated by precedent:  back in 1977, in Coker v...

Rance revisited

Posted on April 15, 2008
Fernando Cabrales had plans for the 300 pounds of marijuana he was bringing into the state, but those plans went out the window when the two guys he’d hired to drive it to Cincinnati got busted, and wasted no time in rolling over on him.  His woes compounded when he was charged with three separate [...

Case Update

Posted on April 14, 2008
Nothing out of Washington this past week, but you’ll want to make space on your calendar for later today, when the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear argument in a case involving the authority of Indian tribal courts.  Moving away from my typically smarmy comments for a moment, the argument in Kennedy v...

Friday roundup

Posted on April 11, 2008
Make mine a double.  Last October, Michigan State University student Amanda Jax decided to celebrate her 21st birthday by going drinking.  They wound up carrying her back to her dorm, and discovered her dead the next morning; an autopsy revealed she had a blood-alcohol content of ...

Ivory towers; 500 Milestone

Posted on April 10, 2008
Back in March of 2001, Victor Harris got into a car chase with the cops.  After they’d pursued him for ten miles (and to give you an idea of the speed involved, this took only six minutes), one of the officers rammed Harris’ car, causing him to lose control; the car ran down an embankment [...

While I was gone…

Posted on April 09, 2008
…on vacation, the 8th District wasn’t, and handed down several decisions of significance.  A quick summary: First up is State v. Henderson, where the defendant’s charged with murder and having a weapon under disability.  Under the law, the defendant can choose to bifurcate the case, and have the judge determine the disability charge...

Searching purses and fleeing the police

Posted on April 08, 2008
Every now and then, you come across a case where the only opinion is a dissent.  That happened in the Ohio Supreme Court’s decision last week in State v. Mercier.  The case was pretty cut and dried:  the police had searched the purse of an occupant of a motor vehicle, and the Court’s opinion, in [...

Searching purses and fleeing the police

Posted on April 07, 2008
Every now and then, you come across a case where the only opinion is a dissent.  That happened in the Ohio Supreme Court’s decision last week in State v. Mercier.  The case was pretty cut and dried:  the police had searched the purse of an occupant of a motor vehicle, and the Court’s opinion, in [...

Case Update

Posted on April 07, 2008
A reminder to be a bit careful about loss of consortium claims in this week’s case of Disciplinary Counsel v. Itta.  Itta had taken over a PI case from another lawyer in the firm, and filed suit, including  a loss of consortium claim because the notes indicated the client was married...

Friday round-up

Posted on April 04, 2008
Got an appellate brief that’s due today — I tell you, if it weren’t for the last minute, I’d never get anything done — so we’ll just skim off the cream from the stuff that’s clogging up the Internet right now...

Acquitted conduct

Posted on April 03, 2008
Michael Hurn was in deep trouble.  He was on trial for possession with intent to distribute 150 grams of powder cocaine, and 450 grams of crack cocaine base.  As anyone who’s familiar with Federal sentencing knows, the powder cocaine was the least of his worries; a conviction on that would have meant a sentence of between [...

Lesser included offenses

Posted on April 02, 2008
The facts in State v. Smith are pretty clear.  Smith and a friend were shoplifting, with the help of the friend’s children, and when the security guard intervened and things started going south, Smith got a bit porky, knocking over a table and biting the security guard before she was finally subdued...

Lesser included offenses

Posted on April 01, 2008
The facts in State v. Smith are pretty clear.  Smith and a friend were shoplifting, with the help of the friend’s children, and when the security guard intervened and things started going south, Smith got a bit porky, knocking over a table and biting the security guard before she was finally subdued...

International treaties, and fools for clients

Posted on April 01, 2008
According to the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Jose Medellin, who’s sitting on death row on Texas, could use a penpal.  At least, he could have back then; he was 24 when he wrote that, and he’s 33 now.  As you can see, Jose is a little circumspect about exactly how he wound up being [...

Case Update - Tanned, Rested & Ready Edition

Posted on March 31, 2008
On Friday morning, I got on an airplane in Phoenix, where it was 79 degrees.  I got off in Cleveland, where it was 34.  ‘Nuff said about my state of mind.  If this keeps up, next week’s Case Update is going to be titled the “Cabin Fever Edition...

Friday wrap-up

Posted on March 21, 2008
So much for that.  Last Friday, I blogged about the 8th District’s decision in State v. Casalicchio, in which the court decided that the Supreme Court got it wrong in State v. Bezak when it held that a sentence imposed without properly advising the defendant of post-release controls was void...

Of Crime and Race

Posted on March 20, 2008
I found interesting the recent firestorm of criticism over the comments of Barack Obama’s pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.  For those who just emerged from a week-long stay in a sensory deprivation tank, YouTube, the Internet, and the talking heads on the cable news shows have regaled us with excerpts from Reverend Wright’s sermons, in [...

Apres la Revolution

Posted on March 19, 2008
Last year, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia threw out the District’s gun control law, which essentially banned the possession of handguns.  Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case, and two things are relatively clear:  First, the Court is going to confirm that the 2nd Amendment grants an [...

Case Update

Posted on March 18, 2008
The big case out of the Supreme Court last week was somewhat timely, in light of the Eliot Spitzer saga.  Jackson v. Columbus dealt with an investigation in to the city’s police chief concerning allegations involving gambling, prostitution, and favoritism...

The power of the pen

Posted on March 17, 2008
Well, I guess I told them, huh?  Within mere hours after I’d blogged last week about the New Haven 8th-grader who’d been suspended for buying a bag of Skittles at school, the district, per this story, came to its senses, reinstated him, and cleared his record...

Legal writing 101

Posted on March 14, 2008
Actually, an advanced course.  LawProse.org is a web site run by Bryan Garner and dedicated to the better legal writing, and on getting you to pay Bryan Garner money to tell you how to do better legal writing.  Nothing wrong with that.  One of the interesting features of the site, is the Educational Videos, which [...

Mailing it in

Posted on March 13, 2008
Got work to do, so let’s throw out some stuff I ran across: Well, no, it doesn’t always stay in Vegas.  With a hat tip to Overlawyered comes this story of Arelia Taveras, an up-and-coming New York lawyer — she’d worked on the 9/11 lawsuits — whose career crashed upon revelations that she’d stolen about $100,000 [...

Upcoming Supreme Court Arguments

Posted on March 12, 2008
The Columbus Seven heard oral arguments yesterday and today on nine cases, several of which could be significant.  (I mean, if they weren’t, the Supreme Court wouldn’t hear them, right?)  A rundown: Howard v. Miami Township Fire Division.  (Links are to court of appeals decision...

Arbitration clauses: sorting through the clutter

Posted on March 11, 2008
What a difference a quarter-century makes.  A few months back, I wrote about Fortune v. Castle Nursing, the 9th District decision upholding an arbitration provision in a nursing home contract.  The 70-year-old resident in that case had filed an action against the nursing home for negligence in allowing her to fall, but the court decided she hadn’t submitted sufficient [...

Case Update, Cabin Fever Edition

Posted on March 10, 2008
It’s Sunday morning, our house is buried in 18 inches of snow, and it’s a race as to what’s going to get to the sidestreet we live on first:  a snowplow, or summer.  To top it off, a pipe under our bathroom sink broke, and we’ve got as much chance of getting a plumber here [...

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