by Douglas Ankney
In a case of first impression, the Supreme Court of Illinois held that a plea of guilty doesn’t bar a defendant from later asserting an actual innocence claim under Illinois’ Post-Conviction Hearing Act, 725 ILCS 5/122 et seq. (West 2016) (“Act”) and announced the procedural framework for ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Court of Illinois ruled that the predicate offenses of the home invasion statute, 720 ILCS 5/12-11 et seq., are lesser-included offenses of that statute.
A jury convicted Alejandro Reveles-Cordova of criminal sexual assault and of home invasion predicated upon criminal sexual assault. On appeal, Reveles ...
by Douglas Ankney
On November 19, 2020, New Yorker Jaythan Kendrick was exonerated of murder and freed from prison after serving 25 years. The Queens County Supreme Court vacated his 1995 conviction based on newly discovered evidence that included DNA and eyewitness testimony.
In November 1994, a 70-year-old woman was ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that Jeremy Hogenkamp was entitled to know, before he was released from prison, what the terms and conditions of his supervised release were to be.
Hogenkamp was sentenced to a term of 10 years’ imprisonment followed by ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (“SJC”) concluded that the holding in Commonwealth v. Brown, 479 Mass. 600 (2018), which requires the Commonwealth to prove that a defendant knew a firearm was loaded in order to sustain a conviction of violating G.L. c. 269, § 10(n) ...
by Douglas Ankney
In 1976, an all-White jury from Concord, North Carolina, convicted Ronnie Long, a Black man, of raping a White woman and sentenced him to 80 years in prison. He was convicted despite a lack of physical evidence tying him to the rape. In 2005, his attorneys discovered ...
by Douglas Ankney
In a case of first impression, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that RICO conspiracy under 18 U.S.C. § 1962(d) does not qualify as a crime of violence under 18 U.S.C. 924(c). The Court also held that a defendant’s sentence of 120 years ...
by Douglas Ankney
In its November 5, 2020 opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, en banc, announced that panels of the Ninth Circuit may now fashion a remedy after a panel has concluded that a district court has erred in determining the admissibility of expert ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Court of Hawai’i held that a search of a residence was unreasonable where officers knocked and announced their presence four times within 25 seconds and then forced entry.
At 6:15 a.m. on September 4, 2015, officers from the Honolulu Police Department (“HPD”) executed a search ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Judicial Court (“SJC”) of Massachusetts announced that continuous, long-term pole camera surveillance targeting a residence is a search under article 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights.
Shortly after an undercover officer made a controlled drug purchase from Nelson Mora, investigators installed pole cameras (a ...
