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, …
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, 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 …
“[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 …
It is a challenge for every criminal defense attorney. You want to do everything you can to put the government’s case to the test. At the same time, recognizing that you still might not win, you don’t want to antagonize the judge such that the judge decides to penalize your client at sentencing. Because, after all, you need to take …
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 ___, ___ …
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. …
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, …
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 …
David Simms was charged with possession of marijuana. On the day of his scheduled trial, the government announced that it was ready to proceed on the charge. Defense counsel stated it was still awaiting discovery on a few matters and, after passing the matter a couple of times, the court eventually postponed the trial so that the discovery issues could …