by David Kim
The Court of Appeal of California, Fourth Appellate District, unanimously reversed a second-degree murder conviction, holding that when a suspect invokes the right to counsel during a Perkins operation (an undercover tactic in which law enforcement operatives pose as fellow detainees to elicit information from …
by David Kim
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania held that expert testimony regarding the manner of a decedent’s death must be stated to a reasonable degree of certainty in order to be admissible – the identical standard governing all other expert opinion testimony. The …
by David Kim
The Supreme Court of the United States unanimously held that restitution imposed under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996 (“MVRA”) constitutes criminal punishment for purposes of the Ex Post Facto Clause. The Court reversed the Eighth Circuit’s contrary conclusion, reasoning that the statutory text …
by David Kim
The Supreme Court of California unanimously held that the rule established in People v. Vargas, 328 P.3d 1020 (Cal. 2014), requiring a trial court to dismiss one strike when two prior strike convictions arise from a single criminal act, applies equally when the defendant’s single …
by David Kim
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held that the reasonableness of global positioning system (“GPS”) monitoring as a condition of probation depends in part on its duration, and thus a judge conducting the individualized determination required by Commonwealth v. Feliz, 119 N.E.3d 700 (Mass. 2019), …
by David Kim
The California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, ruled that trial courts possess inherent authority to correct unauthorized sentences whenever the issue is presented, regardless of whether the original judgment has become final or been affirmed on appeal. The Court rejected the trial court’s conclusion …
by David Kim
When a 4-month-old girl known to the public only as “Baby Kate” vanished from a small Michigan town in 2011, detectives eventually found themselves staring not at a crime-scene photograph or a cell-tower map, but at a smear of dried mud on the bottom of …
by David Kim
In an issue of first impression, the Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court (“OAJC”) concluded that a person who conducts general, unprotected internet searches has no reasonable expectation of privacy in the records generated by those searches under either the Fourth Amendment or Article …
by David Kim
The Supreme Court of Delaware held that when defense counsel moves to withdraw after a client expresses a desire to withdraw a plea, the trial court must resolve counsel’s motion before addressing the plea-withdrawal request, because plea-withdrawal proceedings are a critical stage at which the …
by David Kim
The Supreme Court of Iowa held that generalized expert testimony concerning psychological factors affecting eyewitness identification accuracy and witness confidence should “ordinarily” be admitted when a criminal prosecution relies in part or whole on eyewitness testimony. Providing the first guidance on the boundaries of trial …
