by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Court of Washington reaffirmed that State v. Workman, 584 P.2d 382 (Wash. 1978), provides the appropriate test in determining whether a defendant is entitled to a lesser included offense instruction. The Court also addressed confusion with respect to the application of the Workman test and ...
by Douglas Ankney
In a case of first impression, the Supreme Court of Washington held that the state’s strict-liability drug possession law, codified at RCW 69.50.4013(1), is unconstitutional.
Shannon Blake was arrested in connection with an investigation into stolen vehicles. A jail employee discovered a small baggy containing methamphetamine in ...
by Douglas Ankney
In landmark decision, the Supreme Court of California substantially limited conditions where trial courts may require money bail.
Kenneth Humphrey, 66, was accused of robbing his 79-year-old neighbor of seven dollars and a bottle of cologne. The trial court initially set bail at $600,000. Humphrey petitioned for ...
by Douglas Ankney
In a case of first impression for the Supreme Court of Ohio, it held that “driving on” or “touching” the single solid white longitudinal line on the right-hand edge of a roadway (aka “fog line”) doesn’t violate Ohio’s traffic laws; consequently, doing so doesn’t provide probable cause ...
by Douglas Ankney
A decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit followed a trend among the federal circuits in declaring it impermissible for the commentary to the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines to be applied in a manner that expands their actual meaning.
Former postal employee Jennifer Riccardi ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Court of Nevada held that “the State properly charges a defendant with only a single violation of NRS 202.360(1)(b) when it alleges, without more, that the defendant is a felon who possessed ‘any firearm’ – that is, one or more firearms – at one time ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit vacated Fred McGee’s sentence because the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin improperly imposed a two-level leadership enhancement under Sentencing Guidelines § 3B1.1(c).
Police stopped the vehicle in which McGee, Wayne Frazier, and Terry Glaspie ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit exercised its supervisory powers authorizing it to reverse the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois’s order that revoked Anthony C. Jordan’s supervised release.
In March 2019, Jordan began three years of supervised release imposed upon ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Court of Iowa announced that when deciding a motion for new trial that alleges exculpatory material from medical records was improperly withheld pursuant to Iowa Code § 622.10(4), courts are to apply the materiality standard of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963).
Prior ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Michigan State Police (“MSP”) made admissions in a lawsuit revealing that top officials within the MSP used a text-messaging encryption app that causes messages to self-destruct once deleted, leaving no permanent record on officials’ phones or servers. Since then, Colonel Joseph Gasper issued a new policy ...
