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 argument that the 2nd Amendment was incorporated by the 14th and applied to the states, and even abortion rights supporters have expressed unease that some of her decisions don’t appear to be as pro-choice as they could be.  Most of this is nonsense, of course, and it should be kept in mind that much of this is driven by money:  the various groups have found that court confirmation fights are a great way of energizing their bases and getting them to send in contributions. (keep reading…)

Open discovery is coming sooner than we expected.  And the 8th District upholds a judge who decides that discovery wasn’t forthcoming enough… (keep reading…)

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. (keep reading…)

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 choice to replace Justice David Souter this coming week.  Despite the deluge of letters and emails from my legion of faithful readers, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be me.  So let’s just get to the courts of appeals and be done with it… (keep reading…)

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.  Cargile decided not to tell them about the 2.1 grams of marijuana hidden in the cuff of his pants pocket, and instead denied having anything.

Bad choice.  The drugs were discovered during the booking, and instead of a minor misdemeanor, Cargile was charged with illegally conveying drugs into a detention facility, in violation of RC 2921.36.  Cargile was briefly rescued from the consequences of his decision last year by the 8th District, which vacated his conviction, holding that since his going into the facility wasn’t a voluntary act, he couldn’t be convicted. 

Several other courts, including the 8th in prior cases, had ruled the same way, but on Tuesday the Supreme Court heard argument on Cargile, and it doesn’t look good.  Defense counsel not showing up for the argument didn’t help, but from the tone of the questions, it’s not likely to have mattered.  A couple of justices, Pfeifer and O’Donnell, seemed to latch onto the dilemma a defendant in that situation faces — either incriminate oneself or run the risk of prosecution of an additional offense — but few seemed willing to go beyond the words of the statute:  all the statute requires is that a defendant “knowingly” convey the drugs into a detention facility, and that’s what Cargile did.  What’s particularly maddening is that Cargile could have had almost 50 times as much marijuana as he did, and it still would have been a minor misdemeanor, with a maximum $100 fine.  Instead, he’ll get stuck with a 3rd degree felony.  And the ultimate irony is that he was acquitted of the robbery charge that was the basis for the arrest.

Coming to a city near you… Courtesy of Sentencing Law & Policy comes this story from NPR about the consequences of Miami’s sex offender residency restrictions:

In Miami, a causeway in the middle of Biscayne Bay has become home to one of the county’s least desirable populations: sex offenders. What began a few years ago as a stopgap solution has become de facto public policy.  For sex offenders with few resources who want to stay in Miami, there’s just one option: an encampment of tents and shacks on the Julia Tuttle Causeway.

The “Google mistrial.”  I make it a point any more in trial to ask the judge to instruct the jury not to attempt to access any information about the case on the Internet.  I learned that from sad experience:  last year, I had a child rape case in which the first question from the jury was that someone had checked out the Revised Code online, and wanted to know why the defendant hadn’t been charged with sexual misconduct with a minor.

That pales in comparison to this story from the Times (hat tip to CrimProfBlog):

Last week, a juror in a big federal drug trial in Florida admitted to the judge that he had been doing research on the case on the Internet, directly violating the judge’s instructions and centuries of legal rules. But when the judge questioned the rest of the jury, he got an even bigger shock.

Eight other jurors had been doing the same thing. The federal judge, William J. Zloch, had no choice but to declare a mistrial, a waste of eight weeks of work by federal prosecutors and defense lawyers.

Maybe he just didn’t have a computer.  Then there’s this story:

A Hillsboro, Ore., man who left jury duty after lunch because he was “extremely bored” was due back at the courthouse Tuesday to be arraigned on a charge of contempt of court.

A police report says officers found 25-year-old Grant Faber near his home earlier this month and asked why he skipped out. He said he was bored, and “just couldn’t take it” anymore.

The wife and I will be decorating our Memorial Day tree this weekend, and there’s always the last-minute flurry of Memorial Day gift shopping.  I’ll be back on Tuesday with the Case Update.

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.

The one exception to that is the prosecutor’s office.  Since their obligation is supposedly to justice, not to a particular client, they are not only allowed, but required, to concede when their position is clearly in error. 

That happens a whole lot more in theory than in reality, but it happened last week in the 8th District’s decision in State v. Johnson, and I’m still trying to figure out why. (keep reading…)

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. (keep reading…)

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.  (keep reading…)

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, they tell us, raises the issue of “whether the Double Jeopardy Clause prohibits retrial on a charge when the jury is instructed to begin deliberations with the most serious charge but proceed to a less serious charge if it cannot agree, and the jury finds the defendant guilty of a less serious offense without returning a verdict on the more serious one.”  Ohio is one of the twenty-three states which don’t require a jury to come to a unanimous verdict on the greater offense before moving on to the lessers.  There’s some dictum in a few Ohio cases to indicate that conviction of a lesser offense implies acquittal of the greater, but it’s nothing solid, so we’ll see if the Supremes take this case, and what they do with it.

And absolutely nothing out of Columbus, not even the customary smackdown of a couple of miscreant attorneys.  So let’s get on to the courts of appeals… (keep reading…)

 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.  Today I’m starting my fourth year of doing this.  Although it takes a fair amount of time, probably around ten to twelve hours a week, I’ve enjoyed it immensely.  As you may have gathered, I’ve got a pretty serious writing jones, and this takes care of it.  Plus, it’s a nice little ego trip to have other lawyers and even judges ask me questions, thinking that I may actually may know what I’m talking about.  Essentially, this blog has vindicated my long-held belief that if you write and speak well, people will think you are a good bit smarter than you actually are.

So, in honor of my blogiversay, I’m taking the day off from heavy legal stuff.  Some notes from around the Internet… (keep reading…)