Ohio

What’s Up in the 8th

Posted on November 09, 2010
I won an appeal last week, but there were things that were even more absurd in the 8th District’s body of work.  For instance… I’ve engaged in numerous screeds in the past about the absurdity of holding that sentences are void because a judge improperly imposes post-release controls...

Case Update

Posted on November 08, 2010
Nothing new in Columbus, except, buried in the announcements for November 1, one noting in State v. Cornwell that the court is making certain orders to facilitate its “timely consideration of any matters relating to the execution of appellant’s sentence...

Friday Roundup

Posted on November 05, 2010
Election Returns.  “Follow the money” is a time-tested aphorism in politics, but you wouldn’t think it would apply to California’s referendum legalizing marijuana, which went down to defeat on Tuesday by an 8-point margin.  While reading through some articles on the reasons for the measure’s defeat, I came across this: Preliminary election returns showed Prop [...

Leo Durocher was right

Posted on November 04, 2010
I’ve commented before that much of the defense bar’s protestation of the denial of their clients’ right to speedy trial is so much bluster.  Unless the defendant is in jail, he almost invariably benefits from delay:  witnesses die, move, or forget, and that makes it harder to prove the case against him...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Terry stops and firearms

Posted on November 03, 2010
I’ve said on numerous occasions that the 8th District is the most 4th-Amendment friendly in the state, if not the country.  State v. Morgan seems to be the latest effort on their part to prove I’m wrong. The case begins with the police receiving a call of gunshots being fired from a black Cadillac; a police officer [...

What’s Up in the 8th

Posted on November 02, 2010
And here you are, all bright-eyed and eager to read about the 86 decisions the 8th District handed down while I was lolling around on the beach in a Mai Tai-induced alcoholic stupor.  (Hat tip to the bartender at the Hard Rock Cafe in Lahaina:  yes, a Hurricane is better than a Mai Tai...

Case Update

Posted on November 01, 2010
An appellate court, especially a supreme court, has two basic functions:  to issue decisions which articulate and clarify the law that is to be applied by the lower courts, and to act in a supervisory role, smacking down the lower courts when they get out of line...

While I’m away…

Posted on October 18, 2010
As can be seen from this picture my wife took of me this morning, this Maui vacation has really had a rejuvenating effect on me.  I’ll be back on November 1, with a bitchin’ tan and more insightful legal analysis, coupled with a healthy dose of snark...

Friday Roundup

Posted on October 15, 2010
A woman scorned.  Here’s the way it starts: Carol Ann Bond was excited when her closest friend, Myrlinda Haynes, announced that she was pregnant.  Bond?s excitement turned to rage when she learned that her husband, Clifford Bond, was the child?s father...

Open Discovery: A progress report

Posted on October 14, 2010
You’re representing a defendant in a domestic violence case, and comes time to cross-examine the alleged victim, you’re loaded for bear.  Your client’s told you about the four times he had to call the police on her, and you went and dug up those police reports, combing them for material you might be able to [...

Some ruminations on Crawford

Posted on October 13, 2010
I had to go down to Madison Correctional on Friday to visit a client.  It’s about 40 minutes west of Columbus.  The drive from Cleveland to Columbus isn’t the best, but it’s not the worst, either.  (The trip from Columbus to Cincinnati, on the other hand, is about three steps up from an Apache torture [...

What’s up in the 8th

Posted on October 12, 2010
Sometimes you need to read a good bit of an opinion before you get the gist of the facts.  Sometimes you don’t.  Take, for example, this paragraph from the 8th’s decision last week in State v. Blacho: S.W. testified that appellant was her economics teacher during her junior year at Strongsville High School...

Case Update

Posted on October 11, 2010
I discussed the Supreme Court argument in Michigan v. Bryant last week, but most of the attention was focused on Snyder v. Phelps, the case involving Fred Phelps, erstwhile pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, whose handful of nutcase followers traipse around the country protesting military funerals, on the theory that the [...

Prosecutorial Misconduct

Posted on October 08, 2010
One thing I’ve found in doing appeals is that defense lawyers aren’t really bothered by an allegation that they rendered ineffective assistance at trial.  I’ve even had lawyers tell me how they might have screwed something up.  I’ve never had one ask me not to make an IAC claim, or be upset with me because [...

A snitch in time

Posted on October 07, 2010
Donald Hutchinson was a firm believer in the adage that when opportunity knocks, you answer.  Opportunity, in his case, arrived in the guise of becoming a cellmate in the Cuyahoga County Jail to David Ayers, who was to stand trial for murdering a 76-year-old woman...

The continuing evolution of Crawford

Posted on October 06, 2010
Back in 2001, Detroit police responded to a call of a man shot at a gas station, and found Anthony Covington lying on the ground next to the door of his car, his shirt covered with blood.  The officers asked what happened, and he told them he’d been shot...

What’s Up in the 8th

Posted on October 05, 2010
It’s ironic that with all the new means of communication at our disposal, life has become more impersonal than ever before.  Joyce Gaskins strikes back at this, claiming that her employer inflicted debilitating emotional distress upon her by leaving her a voicemail telling her she was being terminated...

Case Update

Posted on October 04, 2010
On the eve of the US Supreme Court’s new term, the Ohio Supreme Court finally churns out a few opinions of note.  The state statutes and rules specifically prohibit an alternate juror from sitting in on deliberations.  On two previous occasions, the Supreme Court had rejected a defendant’s claim that doing so required reversal...

Friday Roundup

Posted on October 01, 2010
Drug Wars.  In just five weeks, we’ll find out if California becomes the first state to legalize recreational marijuana.  Some people aren’t going to be happy if they do:  as this article from The Hill (h/t to Sentencing Law & Policy) indicates, one of those people is Rep...

Lazy days

Posted on September 30, 2010
In addition to this blog, I also do a summary of the 8th District cases each week on the listservs of the Ohio Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys and the Cuyahoga Criminal Defense Lawyers Association.  If anything, the summaries are a bit more snarky than the stuff I post here, because it’s to a more [...

Allied and predicate offenses

Posted on September 29, 2010
Angela Moulton had a pretty good gig going, even if not a particularly creative one.  She stole people’s mail, applied for credit cards in their name, and used the bogus cards to purchase over $14,000 worth of luxury items.   That resulted in an 80-count indictment, to which she pled no contest and was sentenced to 10 years in [...

What’s Up in the 8th

Posted on September 28, 2010
A constant source of amazement for me is the difference between Federal and state court sentencings.  Federal sentencings used to be pro forma affairs — a matter of calculating the defendant’s “offense level” (what he did), cross-referencing his criminal history (who he was), and plugging it into the Sentencing Guidelines, which would spit out the [...

Case Update

Posted on September 27, 2010
Someday soon I will be able to write about Supreme Court decisions here.  That day is not today; the US Supreme Court’s 2010 term officially starts next week.  The court has agreed to hear oral argument in 38 cases so far, and will probably hear a little over twice that many...

Friday Roundup

Posted on September 24, 2010
The machinery of death.  Teresa Lewis was executed by the State of Virginia last night, the first woman executed by that state in almost a century.  Her guilt is undeniable:  she hired a triggerman and an associate, two guys named Schallenberger and Fuller, to kill her husband and her 25-year-old stepson, the latter for his insurance [...

Hodge resentencings

Posted on September 23, 2010
A week ago, the Supreme Court had oral argument in State v. Hodge.  Hodge raised the issue of whether the US Supreme Court decision in Oregon v. Ice implicitly overruled the Ohio Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Foster with regard to whether it was constitutional for the legislature to mandate that judges make certain findings [...

Narrowing Bodyke

Posted on September 22, 2010
Back in June, in State v. Smith, the 8th District considered a case where a defendant, a sex offender, was charged with failure to verify his current address.  He’d been convicted of rape in 1988, and when he got out of prison in 2001, as the court notes, “Smith ‘automatically’ was classified as a sexually oriented offender...

What’s Up in the 8th

Posted on September 21, 2010
A cardinal rule of appellate practice is that you always file a transcript of whatever proceedings occurred in the trial court.  Just a couple weeks back, I pointed to an appeal in a medical malpractice case, which was lost because the plaintiff’s attorneys decided to present only portions of the transcript of trial, rather than the [...

Case Update

Posted on September 20, 2010
Nothing out of Columbus this past week, although I’ll have some further reflections on State v. Hodge, especially with regard to how resentencing might be impacted, later in the week.  The US Supreme Court functionally begins its term next Monday with the “long conference,” in which it considers the petitions for certiorari that have built [...

Hodge: Another “train wreck”?

Posted on September 17, 2010
Wednesday’s oral argument in State v. Hodge should have gone easily for the defendant.  After all, it’s a very simple argument.  In 2006, in State v. Foster, the Ohio Supreme Court held that the 6th Amendment, as interpreted by the US Supreme Court in Apprendi v...

Judicial release

Posted on September 16, 2010
Here’s an easy way to win a bar bet:  ask somebody, “If you’re sentenced to five years in prison, when can you file for judicial release?” Okay, it’s not likely to incur as much interest as something like, “How many intentional walks did Roger Maris get the year he hit 61 home runs?”*  But it’s the [...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.