Apparently, the Columbus Seven were so disoriented by the recent redesign of the Supreme Court’s web site that they couldn’t bring themselves to write any opinions.  The best news about the redesign, of course, is that it offers the ability to download oral arguments through iTunes.  If you, like me, were putting off the purchase of an iPod because of the inability to use it to listen to oral arguments, well, time to open your wallets.

Down in DC, nothing much this week.  Perhaps to coincide with fantasy baseball, SCOTUSBlog comes out with its StatPack for the Supreme Court’s 2008 term so far.  Previous StatPacks (going back to 1995) are a great way to resolve those arguments you always overhear in your local pub, like who’s written the most opinions or how often Scalia and Ginsburg are on the same side of a case.

Seriously, what the current StatPack did do is remind me that three big cases from October and November have yet to be resolved:  Gant, involving car searches (discussed here), Melendez, involving the application of Crawford to lab tests (here), and Fox, involving the FCC’s “fleeting expletives” policy (here).  Any day now…

Meanwhile, let’s take a look at some people who were hard at work.  A roundup from the courts of appeals… (keep reading…)

Ask the Briefcase.  Well, actually, not from the mailbag.  My buddy Paul is in trial this week.  Normally, about 30% of our conversations start out with the phrase, “Hey, Russ, can you find a case that says…”  When he’s in trial, the percentage approaches 80. 

But he’s a shaprp guy, and he picked up something I hadn’t.  It’s a drug trafficking case, and he’s got to put his client on the stand, a prospect freighted with risk by virtue of his client’s 2000 conviction for a 5th degree felony of — gulp — drug trafficking.  He tells me to take a look at Evidence Rule 609, which deals with impeachment through use of prior convictions “if the crime was punishable by death or imprisonment in excess of one year pursuant to the law under which the accused was convicted.”  So Paul asks me:  can his client’s prior be used for impeachment purposes? (keep reading…)

Last year, in Hyle v. Porter, the Ohio Supreme Court held that the residency restrictions for sex offenders adopted by the legislature in 2003 couldn’t be applied retroactively to those who’d committed crimes prior to the effective date of the statute.  The court skirted the obvious constitutional questions and instead based its decision solely on statutory construction rules, holding that the legislature hadn’t expressly stated that the legislation was to be applied retroactively.  I commented at the time that “this leaves open the possibility that the legislature will remedy the problem by repassing the law, this time with an express statement that it’s intended to be retroactive.”

Turns out the legislature went me one better.  (keep reading…)

Remember the good old days, when the courts would throw out a search, even if the police had a warrant?  Those days pretty much ended a quarter century ago, when the Supreme Court handed down US v. Leon, establishing a “good faith” exception to the warrant requirement:  the exclusionary rule wouldn’t be applied if the police acted “in reasonable reliance on a search warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate,” even if another court later determined that the  warrant shouldn’t have been issued because probable cause was lacking. (keep reading…)

Two weeks worth of cases to look at, mostly criminal, so let’s get to it.

One of the problems with the Cuyahoga courts handling 25,000 criminal cases a year is that some judges tend to speed the process up by taking shortcuts.  One of the favorites is the “group plea,” similar to the one shown  here.  Whoops, that’s a picture of a mass marriage performed by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.  But you get the idea:   the judge will take the bench, a group of defendants from disparate cases sullenly arrayed before him, waiting to be advised en masse of their rights and to consent to the deals that have been brokered that morning on their behalf. (keep reading…)

The vacay in ‘Nix worked out just fine, but touch-down at Cleveland Hopkins Airport always brings to mind Jim Bouton’s observation in Ball Four that if you’re going to be in an airplane crash in Cleveland, better that it be an inbound flight.  And there was the post-return drama of explaining to my new OVI client that it probably wasn’t a good idea to ask the nice police officer to hold his beer while he took the heel-to-toe test.

But I’m tanned, rested, and ready to get back to digging through the plethora of cases that have come down in my absence.  Actually, not much going on at the upper echelons of the judiciary.  The DC Gang handed down Wyeth v. Levine, affirming a $6.8 million award over Wyeth’s contention that its compliance with FDA label regulations should have immunized them from a failure-to-warn claim.  And the major case from Columbus was State v. Smith, actually a reconsideration of a case from last year, in which the court reaffirms its earlier holding that a defendant charged with robbery can be convicted of the lesser-included offense of felony theft, even though the indictment doesn’t specify an amount.

The highlights from the courts of appeals… (keep reading…)