by Sam Rutherford
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that District Courts have discretion to reduce sentences for both covered and noncovered offenses under the First Step Act if the sentences were originally imposed as part of a package.
Background
Following a jury trial involving six ...
by Sam Rutherford
The Supreme Court of the United States held that whether a state court drug conviction counts as a “serious drug offense” under the Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”) is determined by comparing the state and federal statutes defining the controlled substance in effect at the time of ...
by Sam Rutherford
The Supreme Court of Colorado held that convictions for second-degree burglary and first-degree criminal trespass of a dwelling arising from the same course of criminal conduct violate the double jeopardy clauses of the U.S. and Colorado Constitutions, requiring the trespass conviction and sentence be vacated and ...
by Sam Rutherford
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan’s order granting a Michigan prisoner’s petition for writ of habeas corpus based on claims that he received ineffective assistance of counsel and that the State struck Blacks ...
by Sam Rutherford
On April 17, 2024, the Human Rights Defense Center (“HRDC”), CLN’s non-profit publisher, and the civil rights law firm of Loevy and Loevy filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida on behalf of a Jacksonville man who spent nearly 45 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
The Crime
On October 8, 1975, Alfred Mitchell walked into a Jacksonville produce store and shot Kathrina Farah and David Phillips three times each after demanding their money. Willie Williams was sitting in the passenger seat of his car outside and had no idea what Mitchell had done. Mitchell jumped in the vehicle and sped off as police began pursuing them. When Willie asked Mitchell why they were fleeing, he responded, “I just killed two people. Don’t you be the third one.” Willie managed to escape the vehicle when it crashed into a parked car. He was apprehended without resistance by police and taken to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office (“JSO”). Meanwhile, Mitchell fled into a nearby house and shot himself in the head, dying immediately.
Neither Farah nor Phillips died as a result of their gunshot wounds, but ...
by Sam Rutherford
In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement spurred by the police-involved killing of George Floyd, citizens across the country elected reform-minded prosecutors who ran on platforms promising accountability for police who break the law and murder defenseless citizens. Conservative politicians, police unions, and the like have responded by calling for and sometimes obtaining the removal of these duly elected representatives from office. And even when the prosecutors don’t lose their jobs, these pressure campaigns have been largely effective at cowing prosecutorial efforts to hold police accountable for misconduct.
The attack upon Hennepin County, Minnesota Attorney Mary Moriarty is just one recent example. The controversy involving Moriarty began when her office charged State Patrol Trooper Ryan Londregan for shooting and killing 33-year-old Ricky Cobb II on July 31, 2023. Trooper Londregan fired two shots into Cobb’s vehicle during a routine traffic stop after two other troopers at the scene determined that Cobb was wanted on an outstanding misdemeanor charge in another county. Londregan was the only trooper at the scene to pull his sidearm and fire.
Agents from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Investigation (“BCI”) conducted an extensive investigation and determined that Londregan’s use ...
by Sam Rutherford
The Court of Appeals of New York, the state’s highest court, held that the People violated a defendant’s statutory right to a speedy trial by filing a certificate of readiness and then appearing at several court dates to request a post-readiness adjournment (continuance) without any explanation for the delay.
Patrick Labate crashed into a parked police car in December 2017, and, as a result, was charged with reckless driving and related offenses. The People filed a certificate of readiness for trial shortly after his arraignment and reaffirmed their readiness for trial in a series of hearings leading up to a trial date set for September 5, 2018. However, on that day, the parties appeared in court, and the People stated that they were not ready to proceed to trial without explanation.
The trial court subsequently adjourned the case on three separate occasions, each time based on the People’s unexplained statement that they were not ready for trial. Labate moved to dismiss the charges against him, but the trial court denied the motion. He was subsequently convicted and appealed.
New York state law requires that defendants be brought to trial within certain periods of time ...
by Sam Rutherford
In a case of first impression, the Supreme Court of Colorado held that the parole board is not statutorily required to consider a juvenile sex offender’s “maturity,” though is permitted to do so, but is required to consider the offender’s “rehabilitation” when making release decisions where the offender was sentenced as an adult to a maximum term of life in prison.
The Court made this pronouncement on certification of a question of state law from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in a case challenging the constitutionality of Colorado’s sentencing scheme for juvenile sex offenders sentenced as adults to indeterminate life sentences.
Background
In 2011, when Omar Ricardo Godinez was 15 years old, he and three accomplices kidnapped and raped two women within a week of each other. Godinez was charged, tried, and convicted as an adult of six offenses related to these crimes. He was sentenced under Colorado’s Sex Offender Lifetime Supervision Act (“SOLSA”), §§ 18-1.3-1001 to -1012, C.R.S. (2023). SOLSA requires courts to sentence convicted sex offenders to an indeterminate term of at least the minimum of the statutorily prescribed presumptive range for the level of offense committed and a maximum ...
by Samuel Rutherford
As reported by the Associated Press, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced the creation of a database designed to track serious misconduct complaints against federal law enforcement officers. The purpose of the database is to ensure that other agencies do not unknowingly hire officers who have been fired or resigned in response to allegations of serious misconduct.
The database, known as the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database, includes only former and current officers of federal law enforcement agencies with records of serious misconduct over the past seven years. The database is not publicly available and does not include misconduct reports against local or state law enforcement officers, as many police reform groups have advocated for, but it is a step in the right direction.
The database was created in response to an Executive Order issued by President Biden in May 2022, which included dozens of measures aimed at increasing accountability for federal law enforcement officers. “This database will ensure that records of serious misconduct by federal law enforcement officers are readily available to agencies considering hiring those officers,” Biden said in a statement.
Source: apnews.com
by Sam Rutherford
The Supreme Court of Idaho held that a trial court violated a defendant’s Confrontation Clause rights by admitting video recorded interviews of a child witness at his trial on charges that he sexually assaulted the child where the child did not testify, thereby depriving the defendant of an opportunity to cross-examine the witness.
Background
William Parsons was charged with sexually abusing his live-in girlfriend’s four-year-old daughter. The child was taken to the hospital for a sexual assault examination on the day the allegations arose. Police subsequently scheduled an appointment to interview the child at a local hospital specializing in providing care to child victims and conducting forensic interviews. The interview was conducted by a medical social worker 24 days after the allegations arose. The purpose of the interview was to “fully understand” the child’s allegations. The interview was supervised by law enforcement via a closed-circuit TV. It was also recorded. A second recorded interview was conducted about three months later.
The child did not testify at trial because the State did not want to put her “through more trauma and mak[e] her recount sexual abuse in a room full of 12 strangers[.]” Instead, the State ...
