by Dale Chappell
Hundreds of protestors marched in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after the police shooting of Jacob Blake in August 2020. Little did these protestors know that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms issued at least a dozen geofence warrants to gather data from their electronic devices they carried that ...
by Dale Chappell
THE U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE Fourth Circuit held that a prosecutor’s comments were so improper that they violated a defendant’s constitutional right to due process and habeas relief was warranted.
Charles Plymail was convicted of second-degree sexual assault in 1993, after a jury found him ...
by Dale Chappell
Deciding a question of first impression, the Court of Appeal of California, Fourth Appellate District, held that an order to show cause by the California Supreme Court in a habeas corpus case, returnable to the superior court, requires that a motion to disqualify the judge must be ...
by Dale Chappell
The Supreme Court of the United States (“SCOTUS”) held that for felon-in-possession cases, a Rehaif error does not establish a basis for plain-error relief unless the defendant can show that he would have presented evidence at trial that he was unaware of his felon status at ...
by Dale Chappell
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that Michigan’s contemporaneous-objection rule, requiring an objection to an error in the trial court even if the error is unknown at the time to defendant and counsel, is not an adequate state rule to procedurally bar a ...
by Dale Chappell
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reiterated that it is the statute of conviction that determines First Step Act relief under the retroactive application of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (“FSA”), not the defendant’s actual conduct or drug amount involved.
The case came ...
by Dale Chappell
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that enhancements under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines (“USSG”) that were applied to all three counts of conviction that were ungrouped were impermissible triple counting, and contradicted the intent of the Guidelines’ grouping instructions.
Jermaine Clark committed three ...
by Dale Chappell
Acknowledging a circuit split on the issue, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that district courts have the authority to waive interest on restitution post-sentencing.
Edmund Phillips was nearing release and filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the Western District ...
by Dale Chappell
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the grant of habeas corpus relief to a death-sentenced defendant based on the fact the state courts’ application of the governing federal law was objectively unreasonable regarding the defendant’s Sixth Amendment choice-of-counsel right.
It wasn’t that Samuel ...
by Dale Chappell
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that because the defendant was convicted of an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in Georgia under a statute that could be violated with a mens rea of mere reckless conduct, it could not qualify as a ...
