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Interpreting Arizona v. Gant’s “Reasonable Belief” Standard for Car Searches
According to U.S. v. Taylor, police must have reasonable belief for suspecting criminal activity in order to justify a warrantless car search under Gant.
In Re D.M.: When Can You Dismiss a Juvenile Case for “Social Reasons”?
The problem with using a canon of statutory interpretation to justify a legal opinion is that you can usually find some other canon to arrive at the exact opposite conclusion. For example, to support its recent holding in In Re D.M., 47 A.3d 539 (D.C. 2012), the D.C. Court of Appeals used the rule that, whenever possible, different provisions within a …
What Is “Unprovoked Flight” Under Illinois v. Wardlow?
Flight hasn’t always been such a terrible thing. At one time, courts seemed to recognize that there might be all sorts of reasons an innocent person might want to distance himself from the presence of a police officer. Not all contacts with police officers are Norman Rockwell positive, particularly for certain members of our society. And, absent a reasonable suspicion …
Still Brady v. Maryland
The prosecutor can hardly blame me for being skeptical. I ask her about one of the counts that was dropped from the complaint, and she tells me it was because the complaining witness said a few things to her that didn’t add up. “That’s Brady, then,” I tell her. I feel a little badly because she is young and I …
Clark v. U.S.: The Government’s Violation of a Plea Agreement
The defendant is charged with armed robbery. He and the government reach agreement on a plea deal in which the government agrees to ask for no more than 10 years of incarceration. In a memorandum submitted to the judge before sentencing, the government then violates that agreement by asking the judge to impose 20 years. It is the judge, not …
In Re S.W.: Context is Critical When Proving Criminal Threat
I have never been a fan of D.C.’s “threats to do bodily harm” statute. For one thing, it criminalizes behavior that is already covered under the assault statute. After all, is there any real difference between threatening to hurt another person and intending to frighten someone? For another, with almost identical language in both the felony and misdemeanor threats statutes, …
In Re W.R.: Warrantless Search During a Custodial Arrest
Jejomar Untalan has been busy. I reported last week on his successful appeal in In re S.B. This week the D.C. Court of Appeals issued yet another decision bearing Untalan’s name as the appellant’s attorney: In re W.R., 52 A.3d 820 (D.C. 2012). This time, however, Untalan was unsuccessful. W.R. was approached during the school day by a police officer …
California v. Hodari D: A Criminal Defense Lawyer’s Complaint
California v. Hodari D, 499 U.S. 621 (1991), is a lousy opinion. It used to be that a person was seized for Fourth Amendment purposes the moment his or her liberty was “restrained” by “some physical force or show of authority” by a police officer. This was the standard established by Terry v. Ohio, the U.S. Supreme Court case that lays …
SCOTUS on Flight: Alberty v. United States
“[I]t is a matter of common knowledge that men who are entirely innocent do sometimes fly from the scene of a crime through fear of being apprehended as the guilty parties, or from an unwillingness to appear as witnesses. Nor is it true as an accepted axiom of criminal law that ‘the wicked flee when no man pursueth, but the …
Thorne v. U.S.: No penalty to defendant for exercise of constitutional rights
The defendant should not have been penalized at sentencing for having exercised his constitutional right to cross-examine the government’s witness at trial.
Aborted Guilty Pleas and Superhuman Judges
The disciplined judicial mind should not be subjected to any unnecessary strain;…the most austere intellect has a subconscious. How great is this language? Although the language dates back to 1972, it did not come to my attention until it was quoted in a opinion issued this month by the D.C. Court of Appeals, Plummer v. United States, ___A.3d ___, ___ …
Dawkins v. United States: How Far Must A Party Go To Preserve Issue For Appeal?
In an opinion issued last week, Dawkins v. United States, 41 A.3d 1265 (D.C. 2012), the D.C. Court of Appeals addressed the issue of how far a party must go in order to preserve an issue for appeal. The Court also confirmed the long-standing principle that the potential bias of a witness is always relevant in assessing a witness’ credibility. …
The ABCs of “Character Evidence” in a D.C. Criminal Case
Over 65 years ago, Justice Robert H. Jackson, writing for the U.S. Supreme Court in Michelson v. United States, 335 U.S. 469 (1948), complained about the “helpful but illogical options” available to a defendant attempting to introduce evidence of his good character in a criminal trial: “We concur in the general opinion of courts, textwriters and the profession,” Jackson wrote, …
Morgan v. U.S.: Inconsistent Evidence at Trial and “Show Cause” Hearing
One of the things that surprised me when I first began to practice criminal law was the notion that you could be acquitted of a particular offense at trial and then have that very same criminal charge – the one on which you were just found not guilty – serve as the basis for being found in violation of probation …
Simms v. U.S.: On the Pre-Trial Presumption of Prosecutorial Vindictiveness
Was the government’s addition of the new charge an effort to punish Simms for exercising his right to seek additional discovery through compulsory process?
Coles v. U.S.: The Right to a “Meaningful Degree” of Cross-Examination
Although the ability to cross-examine a witness is a critical component of the Sixth Amendment right to confront your accusers in a criminal case, this right is not without boundaries: “Once sufficient cross-examination has occurred to satisfy the Sixth Amendment, . . . the trial judge may curtail cross-examination because of concerns of harassment, prejudice, confusion of the issues, …
Terry v. Ohio as a Seinfeld Episode
I have often said that you can explain everything in life through a Seinfeld episode. And while there is no single case that does for criminal law what Seinfeld does for life, Terry v. Ohio comes pretty darn close. It is not that Terry is my favorite case. After all, it expanded the scope of constitutionally permitted searches. But, …
Why I Hate D.C.’s “Threats to do Bodily Harm” Statute
Your client is 19 years old. She weighs 105 pounds and stands under five feet tall. Having been arrested for a minor offense, she sits handcuffed in a room surrounded by police officers. Her eyebrow is bleeding from a cut she suffered from being thrown up against a chain link fence. All the police officers are male. They are …
English v. United States: Aiding and Abetting Flight in a Motor Vehicle
Although you can be found guilty of aiding and abetting flight in a motor vehicle, there was insufficient evidence in this case to sustain the conviction.
Blades v. U.S.: On Cross-Examination and Bias
The right to cross-examine witnesses is one of the defendant’s most important trial rights. And, among the areas for cross-examination, what could be more important than bias? An inability to accurately perceive events could result in an honest mistake. Bias suggests that the witness might be deliberately coloring the testimony. In Blades v. United States, 25 A.3d 39 (D.C. 2011), …
In Re Gault: “Constitutional Domestication” of the Juvenile Justice System
There are only a small number of criminal cases that all lawyers, even those who don’t practice criminal law, seem to know. Although Miranda v. Arizona is probably the most famous, there is also Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Wong Sun v. United States (suppression of illegally obtained evidence), Crawford v. Washington (right to confrontation), and In Re Winship …
On Ashe v. Swenson: Double Jeopardy and Collateral Estoppel
Many laypersons suffer from misconceptions about the protections offered by the Double Jeopardy Clause contained in the 5th Amendment to the Constitution. As Blonde Justice pointed out in one of her funnier posts, for example, double jeopardy does not cover the situation in which the defendant is forced to show up twice for court appearances on the same charge. Nor does …
Quarles v. Commonwealth: Coerced Confessions in Virginia
In Quarles v. Commonwealth, a recently issued opinion by the Virginia Court of Appeals, the court considered a set of facts similar to the U.S. Supreme Court case of Rhode Island v. Innis. However, finding a number of ways to distinguish this case from Innis, it concluded that the defendant’s confession should have been suppressed as the product of police …
The “Collective Knowledge” Doctrine in D.C.
The firmly established “collective knowledge” doctrine in D.C. provides that, in determining whether the officers possessed sufficient knowledge to establish reasonable suspicion or probable cause for a search or seizure, it is not what any individual officer knows but what the officers know collectively, whether or not the information is actually communicated from one officer to another. At the …
Disorderly Conduct: D.C. Court Narrows The Scope
Disorderly conduct is a really annoying charge. The first problem is that the offense is usually so broad and poorly defined that it is too easy for police to charge and too easy for the government to prove at trial. For example, since intent to cause a “public inconvenience” is a major element of the offense in Pennsylvania, the …
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