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 …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
by Douglas Ankney
The Supreme Court of Wyoming ruled that a district court abused its discretion when it dismissed without prejudice the charges against Matthew A. Carabajal upon the State’s motion under Wyoming Rule of Criminal Procedure 48 (“Rule 48”), and the Supreme Court remanded for dismissal of …
by Douglas Ankney
In a case of first impression, the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, held that when the State chooses to utilize an expert who relies on novel probabilistic genotyping software to render DNA testimony, then a defendant is entitled to access, under an appropriate …
by Douglas Ankney
The Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, held that prisoners sentenced for offenses committed while imprisoned [known as “Thompson terms” pursuant to In Re Thompson, 172 Cal.App.3d 256 (1985)] are not required to serve those sentences after a grant of parole under the …
