by Douglas Ankney
Forensic investigators have long used the well-known stages of blowfly development found on bodies post mortem to determine the amount of time that has elapsed since death. However, that standard of measurement is misleading when the temperatures around the body are outside the moderate range.
For example, ...
by Douglas Ankney
In consolidated cases presenting an issue of first impression, the Supreme Court of New Jersey announced the framework for determining the lawfulness of a warrantless protective sweep of a home where the arrest is made outside of the home.
In the first case, a superior court issued ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit vacated, on the basis of procedural reasonableness, the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico’s sentence imposed upon Jean C. Torres-Melendez because the District Court’s upward variance from the calculated advisory Guidelines range was based on ...
by Douglas Ankney
In a case of first impressions, the Supreme Court of Minnesota held that violation of a condition of pretrial release doesn’t constitute criminal activity, so police questioning of a passenger regarding his conditions of pretrial release during a traffic stop exceeds the permissible scope of the traffic ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee’s denial of Michael B. Johnson, II’s motion seeking a sentence reduction under § 404 of the First Step Act of 2018 (“FSA”) because the sentence imposed upon ...
by Douglas Ankney
In 2021, 11 people in the U.S. were killed as punishment for their crimes. This was the fewest number of Americans in recent history to be subjected to state-sanctioned killing. And it was the seventh consecutive year that fewer than 30 people were executed in the name ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit admonished that “sentencing proceedings are not a free-for-all” and vacated Edward Gibbs’ sentence where the requirements of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32 (“Rule 32”) were not followed when determining the amount of methamphetamine (“meth”) attributable to Gibbs ...
by Douglas Ankney
In companion cases, the Supreme Court of Colorado adopted the functional “reasonable likelihood” framework for determining whether a trial court’s comments to prospective jurors lowered the prosecution’s burden of proof.
During jury voir dire at Ernest Joseph Tibbels trial on charges that included possession of contraband, the ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Court of Appeals of Maryland (“MCOA”) held that its holding in Kazadi v. State, 223 A.3d 554 (Md. 2020) applies to cases where a defendant had not yet noted an appeal when Kazadi was issued but had preserved a Kazadi issue at trial.
In Kazadi ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas erred in its drug quantity attribution by implausibly finding that Zaira Valenzuela Lujan would have used all of the $10,694 seized from her to purchase additional ...
