by Dale Chappell
Thanks to technology, judges’ decisions in the thousands of sentences they impose each year get isolated in an unsearchable database called PACER — Public Access to Court Electronic Records. While the public may be able to access a judge’s sentencing decision on PACER, they can only do ...
by Dale Chappell
A public records request by the Chicago Tribune found that the Chicago Police Department has been doing background checks and creating files on citizens who speak at weekly meetings of the city’s police disciplinary board. A police spokesman admitted it goes back to at least 2018.
Documents ...
by Dale Chappell
In a case applying a newly minted U.S. Supreme Court decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that an appeal waiver in a plea agreement did not relieve counsel of his duty to consult with his client about filing an appeal.
When the ...
by Dale Chappell
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California granted postconviction relief on June 12, 2019, to a federal prisoner serving a mandatory life sentence, holding that the so-called “residual clause” of the federal three-strikes law is unconstitutional.
The case came before the Court in a ...
by Dale Chappell
In a case that may have lowered one of the hurdles erected by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to stop the flow of relief being handed to federal prisoners under Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551(2015) (“Johnson 2015”), the Court held ...
by Dale Chappell
A sharply divided Supreme Court of the United States narrowly held on June 26, 2019, that the revocation provision of the federal sex offender supervised release statute is unconstitutional because it violates the right to trial by jury under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments – so a ...
by Dale Chappell
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that a prior conviction for sodomy under New York law is not a valid prior sexual offense conviction under the categorical approach to mandate a life sentence as a repeat sex offender under 18 U.S.C. § 3559(e). ...
by Dale Chappell
A Florida sentencing statute that allows a judge to find aggravating factors to impose a higher sentence violates the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Supreme Court of Florida held.
When Laverne Brown was convicted of a third-degree felony, she scored a total of 16.4 points, ...
by Dale Chappell
The State and not the defendant has the burden to prove that a defendant is competent to stand trial, the Supreme Court of Minnesota held, clarifying the rule on the issue of determining competency to stand trial.
After two doctors evaluated Edwin Curtis when defense counsel raised ...
by Dale Chappell
Now that marijuana is legal in several states, does a sniff by a drug dog trained to detect marijuana (and other drugs) constitute a “search,” since it can now reveal something that is lawful to possess (small amounts of marijuana)? The Supreme Court of Colorado ruled that ...
