by Douglas Ankney
In 1987, in Williamson County, Texas, 32-year-old Michael Morton was sentenced to life in prison for murdering his 31-year-old wife, Christine. The young mother of a three-year-old son had been bludgeoned to death in their bed.
Decades later, Morton’s attorneys would discover that district attorney Ken Anderson ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (“TCCA”) reversed Jesse Adrian Martinez’s conviction after determining that the Court of Appeals (“COA”) misapplied the factors of Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590 (1975) (announcing four-factor test to determine whether a confession is sufficiently attenuated from illegal arrest as ...
by Douglas Ankney
On April 8, 2021, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper announced the formation of the North Carolina Juvenile Sentence Review Board (“Review Board”). Governor Cooper referenced well-known facts, saying “[d]evelopments in science continue to show fundamental differences between juvenile and adult minds. For those who have taken significant ...
by Doug Ankney
The Court of Appeal of California, Second Appellate District, held that Penal Code § 3051, subd. (h) violates the equal protection rights of Andre Lamont Woods. (All statutory references are to the California Penal Code.)
Woods was convicted by a jury of numerous offenses, including forcible rape. ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that the issue of whether an accused person’s waiver of his Miranda rights was knowing and intelligent is a separate and distinct inquiry from the issue of whether the statement was voluntary.
Jeremy Outland was arrested for ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that the Sentencing Commission’s policy statement in U.S. Sentencing Guidelines § 1B1.13 is inapplicable to a prisoner’s own motion for compassionate release filed under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i).
Francesk Shkambi filed a motion in the U.S. District ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Court of Illinois affirmed a decision of the appellate court that ruled a motion to suppress inculpatory statements should have been granted where statements were given after police prolonged a traffic stop to investigate offenses unrelated to the purpose of the traffic stop.
Cordell Bass ...
by Douglas Ankney
In recent months, Baltimore and St. Louis city officials voted unanimously to spare their residents from further invasions of their privacy by terminating a “panoptic aerial surveillance system” that was designed to protect soldiers on the battlefield.
From April to October 2020, Baltimore residents were subjected to ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Court of West Virginia held that an Emergency Protective Order (“EPO”) issued pursuant to West Virginia Code § 48-27-403 (2006) (“EPO Statute”) is not a de facto search warrant.
Jeffery Alan Snyder’s ex-wife petitioned ex parte for an EPO against him. The magistrate court issued ...
by Douglas Ankney
Since the Supreme Court decided Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), the idea has been that death sentences are reserved for only those murders committed by the worst of the worst killers. But in August 1991, Charles Burton helped five other men rob an AutoZone ...
