Ohio

Case Update

Posted on June 01, 2009
The US Supreme Court is coming down with its end-of-term decisions; last week it issued three.  In Abuelhawa v. US, the defendant had purchased a gram of cocaine on two occasions, a misdemeanor under Federal law, but had made six telephone calls to do arrange the purchases, and so was indicted and convicted of six felony counts [...

Friday Roundup

Posted on May 29, 2009
All of DC is abuzz about President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor as the next Supreme Court Justice.  Right-wing groups inveighed about her use of the word “empathy” as a factor in judicial decision-making, the gun rights crowd as labeled her an “enemy of gun-owners” by virtue of a per curiam decision she participated in rejecting a post-Heller [...

Open discovery and no discovery

Posted on May 28, 2009
Open discovery is coming sooner than we expected.  And the 8th District upholds a judge who decides that discovery wasn’t forthcoming enough… I’ve written before about the ongoing battle for open discovery in criminal cases — having prosecutors give defense counsel full access to police reports and witness statements...

What’s Up in the 8th

Posted on May 27, 2009
The latest trend in ineffective-assistance claims, why bother with supreme courts, traps for unwary defense attorneys, and our new (and perhaps one-time) feature — the Weekly “It Wouldn’t Be Harmless Error If…” Quiz.   All that and more from the 8th this week...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Case Update

Posted on May 26, 2009
Nothing out of Columbus, and the only point of legal interest out of Washington is this article, reporting a study which shows that the side which gets asked the most questions in a Supreme Court oral argument is most likely to lose.  The other Court-related news is the scuttlebutt that President Obama will be announcing his [...

Friday Roundup

Posted on May 22, 2009
Hobson’s choice.  Cleveland Cargile was busted on a robbery charge back in 2007.  Just before taking him into the jail, the cops told him that carrying drugs into the jail is a crime, and that if he had any on him he’d better ‘fess up now...

Conceding error

Posted on May 21, 2009
One of the things our adversarial system of justice trains attorneys to do is practice a “no-quarter given, none-asked” form of litigation:  a lawyer may refrain from making certain arguments because he believes that they aren’t credible, but rarely will he concede that the arguments he has made are wrong...

Trial strategy and IAC claims

Posted on May 20, 2009
Trial lawyers in Cleveland are an incompetent lot.  At least, that’s what you’d think from reading the arguments of appellate lawyers.  Ineffective assistance of counsel claims figured prominently in a third of the criminal decisions out of the 8th District last week...

8th District Roundup

Posted on May 19, 2009
If you’re looking for me to provide my weekly dose of criticism for the 8th’s decisions, look elsewhere:  28 opinions this week, not a dud in any of them, and several of them providing lengthy, thoughtful opinions on both civil and criminal matters...

Case Update

Posted on May 18, 2009
Well, this makes it easy.  Oral arguments are done for the term in DC, and no new decisions were announced this past week.  About the only news — and I’m really plumbing the depths here — is a cert filing in a case out of Washington by the law firm which runs SCOTUSblog and which, [...

Blogiversary

Posted on May 15, 2009
 The other day, in discussing the Supreme Court’s decision on the nursing home arbitration agreement, I linked to a post that I’d done on May 14, 2006.  Other than the de rigeur welcome post, it was the very first one I did. That’s right...

To wit: GUN/TOY GUN

Posted on May 14, 2009
My client “Sam” sure sounded like a badass:  four counts of aggravated robbery, each with one- and three-year gun specs, and four counts of kidnapping.  According to the police report that the prosecutor was reading me, Sam tried to hold up four people in an apartment at gunpoint...

Nursing homes and arbitration agreements

Posted on May 13, 2009
A year ago, I wrote about the 8th District’s decision in Hayes v. Oakridge Nursing Home, in which the court by 2-1 vote invalidated an arbitration clause in a nursing home contract between the home and a 94-year-old resident.  Although sympathetic to the result, I questioned the court’s reasoning, especially in finding that the agreement [...

What’s Up in the 8th

Posted on May 12, 2009
On tap this week in the 8th:  F. Scott Fitzgerald’s observation that there are no second acts in American lives doesn’t apply to grand juries, what abuse of discretion should mean, and people you wouldn’t want as neighbors. What to do if a grand jury no-bills a case?  Take it to a different grand jury...

Case Update

Posted on May 11, 2009
The US Supreme Court has finished oral argument for the term, and about the only key criminal case still undecided is Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, involving the applicability of Crawford v. Washington to lab reports.  Word is that President Obama may announce his pick for the justice to replace David Souter; a somewhat disquieting aspect of [...

Friday Roundup

Posted on May 08, 2009
Time to update you on some past stories:  what happened to Harry Ollison, what’s going to happen to teens sentenced to life in prison without parole, and judicial opinions I’d like to see. Life for teens.  A year ago, I mentioned a news story which pointed out that America and Somalia are the only countries which [...

Legislative intent

Posted on May 07, 2009
One of the problems with trying to determine legislative intent is that it presumes the legislature had one.  One of the only two justices on the Ohio Supreme Court with any legislative experience picked up on that last week in the court’s decision in Eppley v...

Hard time

Posted on May 06, 2009
Juanita Myrick had a pretty good gig going.  She worked for the Cuyahoga County Department of Employment and Family Services for 17 years.  For 14 of them, she used her position to issue herself checks — 759 of them in all — for public assistance benefits she wasn’t entitled to...

What’s Up in the 8th

Posted on May 05, 2009
Mamas, don’t let your children grow up to be personal injury lawyers.  And while you’re at it, you might warn them about the dangers posed by the combination of women and crack pipes.  I had an old client, whom I’ll call Marilyn, telephone me last week...

Case Update

Posted on May 04, 2009
Lots of news from DC, topped with the announcement that David Souter will be retiring from the Supreme Court.  For those of you with a bent for walking down Memory Lane, check out this article from the Washington Post right after Souter first took the bench: Justice David H...

A coming Ice Age?

Posted on May 01, 2009
The Supreme Court occasionally ventures out of Columbus to hold arguments in various courthouses around the state.  The venue last week was the Columbiana Courthouse, and Chief Justice Moyer began the proceedings by noting that the court was returning to Columbiana for the first time in 260 years, which was off by only a century; [...

School Days

Posted on April 30, 2009
One conversation I never had with my kid over dinner:  “So, honey, anything happen in school today?”  “Yeah, I got strip-searched.” Last week, the Justices of the United States Supreme Court debated just that scenario, in Redding v...

Bye Bye, Belton?

Posted on April 29, 2009
I’m not sure what all the signs of the Apocalypse are, but right after Pestilence and Famine has got to be Antonin Scalia providing the majority for  a pro-defendant 4th Amendment decision. One of the well-recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement is search incident to arrest...

What’s up in the 8th

Posted on April 28, 2009
Slim pickings — only a dozen or so cases.  A lesson (actually two) for appellate lawyers in the necessity of reading the journal entry you’re appealing from, the fact that the old line “just when you think you’re out, they pull you back in” applies to prison, too, and a reminder that the “plain feel” [...

Case Update

Posted on April 27, 2009
Nothing from interest out of Columbus, except for the usual spate of disciplinary decisions, like this one, which helpfully informs us that if you’re going to forge a judge’s signature on a journal entry granting occupational driving privileges, you need to come up with a better excuse than “I wanted to show my client what one [...

Coffin nails

Posted on April 24, 2009
Retro Week here at the Briefcase is almost over.  Got the briefs done, and next week we’ll go back to a full schedule, which will include a look at the Gant decision, the oral argument in the Supreme Court case on strip-searching school students, and the possible ramifications of its decision earlier this year in [...

Ollison Update

Posted on April 23, 2009
Well, that certainly hit a sore spot.  Last week, I highlighted the 8th District’s decision in State v. Ollison, affirming a 3½ year sentence for a 76-year-0ld Korean War vet who’d fired a shotgun at someone who’d been harassing him, hitting the “victim” in the back of the leg with three small pellets, resulting in injury [...

War Stories, Chapter 43

Posted on April 22, 2009
Time for another retro post.  Every now and then, instead of providing insightful analysis, I regale my readers with an episode from my own experiences in what most observers have concluded is a thoroughly undistinguished legal career.  This post, from January of 2008, recounts one of them...

What’s up in the 8th

Posted on April 21, 2009
A real live post this time.  No lifelines to civil attorneys who haven’t learned the rules, a split in search and seizure decisions, and three dissents in criminal cases, doubling the amount for the entire year.  That, and some reminders to trial judges not to get too cute, are on tap this week down by the [...

Gant out

Posted on April 21, 2009
Had to take time out for this breaking news.  This morning, the Supreme Court released one of the most significant 4th Amendment cases in the past several years.  Arizona v. Gant, which I discussed back here, involved the question of whether the police can search a car incident to the driver’s arrest, if the driver [...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.