It’s fascinating when you think about it. They don’t claim to have previously been wrong or to have simply rethought or changed their minds in light of experience or developments or whatever. They claim to have been so inarticulate and incompetent that they wrote what they didn’t mean.

No question O’Donnell delineates how the charges arose (i.e. one felonious and one attempted murder from each shot) but that does not answer the question of whether he can be convicted and sentence of both. If the Court was really going to hold that Williams could be convicted twice of attempted murder they would have to do one of two things: 1) Explicitly overrule Brown; or 2) find a seperate animus based on each shot. They did not do either.

Also, the Supreme Court just recently had a case where the defendant stabbed the victim twice in sucession (Marcus Carter) where the court summarily reversed two convictions for felonious assault on the basis of Brown. This case is no different.

Obviously the decision could be clearer. And if your right, then we are back to pre-Cabrales madness.

Here’s the scary thing: When’s the last time that bright guys like you and me — well, you, anyway — could disagree about the basic holding of a Supreme Court case? We might argue as to whether it was a good one or not, but arguing about what it even means?

I read the opinion again and I have to disagree with you. In the first paragraph, O’Donnell lays out the State’s position: it argues that “Williams may be seperately convicted and sentenced for both counts of felonious assault and one count of attempted murder.” In light of Brown, the State did not even argue that Williams could be convicted twice of attempted murder because that is frankly ridiculous. Thus O’Donnell does not address that issue. Bottomline–Williams goes back and the State gets to choose one conviction and sentence for attempted murder.