Case Update
On the list of Things I Could've Watched Instead of Another
Episode of The Walking Dead, we can
add C-Span's coverage
of Chief Justice John Roberts' remarks to the Fourth Circuit Judicial
Conference a couple weeks back. After opening
with the joke about the two rabbis and a prostitute -- and yes, I'm making that
up -- Roberts did let on with something I didn't know: the justices don't discuss the cases among
themselves before oral argument. That came as part of his discussion about the
growing problems with the justices dominating the argument; in certain cases,
you could actually see justices framing their questions more to make an
argument to one of their fellow members, usually Kennedy, rather than to probe
the lawyer's case.
The other thing noted by Roberts is the exceedingly narrow
background of the justices: none ever
held elective office, and only one (Kagan) did not come from an appellate
judgeship. That contrasts sharply with
prior courts: William Howard Taft was a former
president when he ascended to the Court, Earl Warren was a governor, and in the
1940's, three members of the Court had been senators. Roberts acknowledged that this resulted in decisions
focusing on legal reasoning rather than public policy. You could spend a lot of time arguing about
whether that's a good thing or bad.
Frankly, I think the bigger problem is that the justices are so far
removed from the lives that ordinary people live that they have no idea of the
practical impact of their decisions.
Nothing from the Ohio Supreme Court, but there's a couple
good ones in the courts of appeals, so let's take a look at those.
State
v. White provides a typical fact pattern: the cop stop someone for a traffic violation,
then, as the stop is just about to be concluded, the cop asks for consent to
search the car. Most people will give
it. The law here is that the consent is
valid if it's obtained during the time reasonably necessary to process the
traffic violation. Once the citation is
issued, though, the lawful basis for the detention ceases, unless the officer
comes up with a reasonable suspicion of further criminal activity during the
stop. If he doesn't, the consent is
invalid, unless the officer can show that a reasonable person would have
believed they were free to leave. The judge
tossed the search, and the 2nd District's opinion affirming that tells you just
about everything you need to know about this type of situation.
A more troublesome result in a search case comes in the 5th
District's decision in State
v. Kithcart, in which the defendant contested the validity of a search
warrant issued by a magistrate. The
court concluded that under Ohio law, only a "judge" - an elected official who
acts in a judicial capacity - can sign a search warrant. The court nonetheless concludes that the
search is saved by the good faith exception to the warrant requirement. I'm not sure how seeking a warrant from
someone who's not authorized to issue one qualifies as "good faith."
We aren't
family. That rarest of birds, a reversal
of a trial judge's decision to deny a motion to withdraw a plea, occurs in the
9th District's decision in State
v. Jeffrey. And it took the
death of both the defendant's sister and five-year-old daughter to accomplish
that; the court found that attendance at the sister's impending funeral, plus planning
for the daughter's, sufficiently clouded Jeffrey's thought processes that his
plea couldn't be described as knowing, intelligent, and voluntary. The puzzling aspect of the case is what
Jeffrey hoped to accomplish with this: after
his plea to burglary and domestic violence, he was sentenced to three years of
community control sanctions.
Yeah, sure. The Lexis headnote for the 5th District's
decision in State
v. Marshall:
Trial court did not err in denying
defendant's request to remove juror for cause under R.C. 2945.25 as, although
juror initially stated that she would have concerns over allegation that
defendant had five prior OVI convictions, she stated that she could reserve any
judgment about whether defendant was guilty or not until she heard all the
evidence.
Words to live by. From the 6th District's decision in State
v. Taylor: "The fact that counsel gave his opinion
regarding the strength of the defendant's case or whether the defendant should
accept a plea reflects a fulfillment of the duty of appointed counsel, whether
the accused wants to hear it or not."
Wonder which demographic he's shooting for.
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