Opinions/Cases

Mitchell v. U.S.: Cruelty to Children

April 16, 2013 Opinions/Cases

In Pennsylvania, the offense is known as endangering the welfare of a child.  In D.C., it is cruelty to children and, as the D.C. Court of Appeals pointed out recently in Mitchell v. United States, __ A.3d __ (D.C. 2013), you cannot read too much into the title of a criminal offense:  The title is [...]

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Young v. U.S.: The Confrontation Clause Is Still Alive In D.C.

April 4, 2013 Criminal Procedure

The U.S. Supreme Court has made such a mess of the Confrontation Clause line of cases that the D.C. Court of Appeals declared today that it really doesn’t know what to do. So it decided to do the right thing instead. In Robert Young v. United States, __ A.3d __ (D.C. 2013), the D.C. Court [...]

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Further Guidance on Significant Bodily Injury in Quintanilla v. U.S.

March 25, 2013 Criminal Procedure

The D.C. Court of Appeals took another step last week in defining what up until recently has been a poorly defined term:  the “significant bodily injury” that is required in order for the government to prove felony assault. Although the appellant in Fidel Quintanilla v. United States, __ A.3 __ (D.C. 2013), was convicted of [...]

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Haye v. U.S.: Unlawful Entry, Criminal Contempt, Double Jeopardy, and Prior Bad Acts

March 24, 2013 Criminal Procedure

When people talk about evidence being admitted at trial, they tend to think in terms of physical evidence:  guns, drugs, documents, fingerprints, DNA, that type of thing. Sometimes you need to remind them that oral testimony alone – someone getting up on the stand and testifying to what he or she saw – can also [...]

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Happy Birthday to Gideon: On the Arrogance of Public Defenders

March 19, 2013 Opinions/Cases

At the Defender Association of Philadelphia, the office policy in multi-defendant cases was to represent the defendant with the most serious charges, the worst fact pattern, and the worst legal posture. The other defendants would then be farmed out to court-appointed lawyers. Although nobody ever explained the rationale behind this policy to me, I assumed [...]

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D.C. Court of Appeals on “Furtive Gestures”

March 16, 2013 Criminal Procedure

Sometimes you need to go outside your own jurisdiction to find the right language in support of an argument.  For years I have been looking for language that captures the problems — the ambiguity and the over-inclusiveness – posed by use of the police officer’s favorite catch-all phrase, “furtive gestures.”  Today I found what is [...]

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Constructive Possession: Intent Required, Not Just Proximity and Knowledge

March 14, 2013 Criminal Procedure

That a controlled substance can be possessed constructively as well as actually is a court-made decision. As Judge Ruiz put it in her concurring opinion to Rivas v. United States, 783 A.2d 125 (D.C. 2005), the “doctrine of constructive possession is a judicially developed theory of liability designed to be a ‘proxy’ for actual possession.” [...]

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Lee v. United States: Mistaken Jury Instructions on the “Defense of Others”

March 2, 2013 Defenses to Criminal Charges

The D.C. Court of Appeals was apparently feeling charitable. In Adrian Lee v. United States, __ A.3d __ (D.C. 2013), a decision issued last week, the Court bent over backwards to justify and explain mistaken jury instructions issued by the trial judge. Even as it reversed him. Adrian Lee was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and [...]

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Motive, Intent, Identity, and Absence of Mistake Under Drew

February 23, 2013 Evidence

One of the disadvantages to practicing law in D.C. is that the courts here do not use the Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE). You can’t just consult the text of a particular rule and then the case law that interprets that rule. Instead, you have to go directly to the case law or statute. This [...]

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In Re K.A.: The “Quantum of Independent Evidence” Needed to Corroborate a Confession

February 13, 2013 Firearms/Weapons

The corpus delicti rule has always been one of my favorite legal doctrines. It is not just that the rule is in Latin, although that never hurts. It is not that the rule dates back centuries, although that is pretty cool too. Instead, what I like about the rule is that it stands for the [...]

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