HELPFUL CASES APRIL 2008
SELECTED STATE AND FEDERAL CASES FAVORABLE TO THE DEFENSE
U.S.
Supreme Court
1st Circuit Court of Appeals [None this update]
2nd Circuit Court of Appeals
3rd Circuit Court of
Appeals [None this update]
4th Circuit Court of Appeals
5th Circuit Court of
Appeals [None this update]
6th Circuit Court of
Appeals
7th Circuit Court of
Appeals [None this update]
8th Circuit Court of Appeals
9th Circuit Court of
Appeals
10th Circuit Court of Appeals [None this update]
11th Circuit Court of Appeals
D.C. Circuit Court
of Appeals
Supreme Court of Florida
Illinois Supreme Court
Texas Criminal
Court of Appeals
Federal Courts (April 1-30, 2008)
Selected Decisions:
Begay v. U.S. (4/16/2008, No. 06-11543) ____ US ____ [170 LEd2d 490; 128 SCt 1581]: Driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI), as set forth in New Mexico’s criminal statutes, is not a "violent felony" as the term is defined in the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA).
U.S. v. Hardwick (4/11/2008, 2nd Cir. No. 04-1369, 04-2886) 523 F3d 94: District court’s admission of a plea allocution was plain error under Crawford.
U.S. v. Hairston (4/3/2008, 4th Cir. No. 05-5178) 522 F3d 336: District court violated Rule 11 by not informing defendant before accepting his guilty pleas that he faced a mandatory fifteen-year minimum sentence.
U.S. v. Gray (4/2/2008, 6th Cir. No. 05-4482, 06-3086, 06-3209) 521 F3d 514: Defendants’ convictions under the Hobbs Act required reversal based on challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence.
U.S. v. Huntley (4/18/2008, 8th Cir. No. 07-3026) 523 F3d 874: Conviction and sentence for possession of a firearm during the commission of a drug trafficking crime is reversed and remanded where the district court’s jury instruction, though correct when given, was inconsistent with Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Watson v. US (12/10/2007, No. No. 06-571) ____ US ____ [169 LEd2d 472; 128 SCt 579].
Osborne v. Dist. Attorney’s Office for the Third Judicial Dist. (4/2/2008, 9th Cir. No. 06-35875) 521 F3d 1118: Prisoner has due process right of access to the evidence for purposes of post-conviction DNA testing. Plaintiff’s confession during parole proceedings did not necessarily trump the materiality of physical evidence or the right to obtain post-conviction access to evidence.
U.S. v. Perdomo-Espana (4/14/2008, 9th Cir. No. 07-50232) 522 F3d 983: The test for entitlement to a defense of necessity is objective, as opposed to subjective. The defendant must establish that a reasonable jury could conclude that: 1) he was faced with a choice of evils and reasonably chose the lesser evil; 2) he reasonably acted to prevent imminent harm; 3) he reasonably anticipated a causal relation between his conduct and the harm to be avoided; and 4) he reasonably believed there were no other legal alternatives to violating the law.
U.S. v. Westry (4/16/2008, 11th Cir. No. 06-13847) 524 F3d 1198: Finding that a defendant was a member of the drug conspiracy prior to the victim’s death was based on insufficient evidence and the government conceded that the district court erroneously applied a death enhancement to defendants’ sentences on substantive drug distribution charges, as the criminal conduct giving rise to the substantive charges occurred after the victim’s death.
U.S. v. Bryant (4/25/2008, D.C. Cir. No. 06-3129) 523 F3d 349: Conviction for possession of an unregistered firearm reversed where the trial was commenced more than 70 non-excludable days after the speedy trial clock began running, in violation of the Speedy Trial Act (STA).
Garzon v. State of Florida (4/10/2008, FL No. SC06-2235, SC06-2290) 980 So2d 1038: Use of the "and/or" conjunctive phrase between the names of defendants in criminal jury instructions, the Supreme Court of Florida finds that the use of "and/or" was error.
State of Florida v. Kettell (4/24/2008, FL No. SC07-573) 980 So2d 1061: The wanton or malicious intent element of the crime of wantonly or maliciously shooting into a building, as defined by Florida Statutes section 790.19, is not established solely by evidence that a defendant fired a shot at, within, or into a building. The state also must prove that the shooting was done wantonly or maliciously as those terms are defined in the standard jury instruction.
People v. Carpenter (4/17/2008, IL No. 103616, 103856, 103857cons.) 228 Ill.2d 250 [888 NE2d 105]: In consolidated cases arising from instances where defendants had vehicle air bag compartments which contained something other than air bags and one was subsequently convicted of the felony offense of having a false or secret compartment in the motor vehicle, the statute is held unconstitutional as violative of substantiative due process guarantees where it fails to survive the rational basis test that a statute must employ reasonable means to reach a desired objective.
Texas Criminal Court of Appeals
Alberty v. State of Texas (4/9/2008, TX No. PD-0822-07, PD-0823-07) 250 SW3d 115: Jury instructions in aggravated sexual assault of a child case were erroneous because they did not limit the "on or about" language in regard to the statute of limitations to any date prior to the date of the filing of the indictment, and on or after defendant’s seventeenth birthday, thus permitting the jury to convict him on the basis of testimony about numerous offenses alleged to have been committed while he was a juvenile.