Public Defense

It?s an opinionated week!

By Gideon

Lots and lots of interesting decisions this week, both from SCOTUS and the CT Supreme Court. For Kennedy coverage, the best place to go is Sex Crimes. Giles is the potentially more interesting decision for the criminal defense practitioner. I should have something up on Giles later today.

Then, of course, there’s the gun ban case, which will be announced today. SCOTUSblog will have up to the minute coverage.

Of even more interest to the CT practitioner should be yesterday’s decisions by the CT Supreme Court in Salamon (majority, concurrence, concurrence and dissent) and Sanseverino (majority and dissent).

Not only do these decisions make me look foolish, but they also overrule very recent precedent. In doing so, CT now comes in line with a majority of states (and common sense) by differentiating between kidnapping and unlawful restraint.

Until yesterday, any slight restraint on a victim during the commission of another felony could be charged as kidnapping - a B felony carrying a 20 year penalty. Now, the court has backtracked and said that in order to prove kidnapping there must be something more than just the restraint required to carry out the underlying felony.

Where this will affect practice is that prosecutors will no longer be able to charge every defendant with kidnapping, no matter how slight the restraint. Those defendants will have to be charged with unlawful restraint - a B misdemeanor.

The decisions are dense and very interesting, so I will have full posts on them as soon as I’ve had a chance to digest them.

ShareThis

Full post as published by A Public Defender on June 26, 2008 (boomark / email).