by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled that the Government is barred – on double jeopardy grounds – from seeking the death penalty at the retrial of Alexis Candelario-Santana because the jury’s verdict that did not impose the death sentence at Candelario’s …
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that reasonable suspicion permitting police to conduct a traffic stop did not provide police with probable cause to open the car’s door and lean inside.
Officer Kolby Willmes spotted Malik Ngumezi’s vehicle parked at a gas station and …
by Douglas Ankney
The Court of Appeals of New York reversed the decision of the appellate division that had affirmed a county court’s denial of Everett D. Balkman’s motion to suppress because the People’s evidence was insufficient to show the traffic stop was lawful.
Balkman was the …
by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Court of Kansas clarified that state law does not require consent to search to be verbal and that nonverbal conduct may constitute consent under the totality of the circumstance.
Responding to a complaint of an odor of marijuana, officers Robert McKeirnan and …
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 …
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. …
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 …
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’ …
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, …
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 …
