State v. Darrick L. Bennett, 2016AP2209-CR, 9/18/18, District 1 (not recommended for publication); case activity (including briefs) Bennett was charged with 1st degree intentional homicide, but pled guilty to 1st degree reckless homicide. In a decision turning on facts specific to this case, the court of appeals affirmed the trial court’s decision denying (a) plea… Read more
29. Postconv. Motions
State v. Mark G. McCaskill, 2017AP2443-CR, 6/14/18, District 4 (1-judge opinion, ineligible for publication); case activity (including briefs) Police found McCaskill unconscious, smelling of alcohol, and without a shirt or shoes in the driver’s seat of a car parked by a residence. Blood tests showed a .263 BAC. He was convicted of operating with a… Read more
State v. David McAlister, Sr., 2018 WI 34, 4/17/18, affirming an unpublished court of appeals order, 2014AP2561; case activity A jury convicted McAlister in 2007 of three counts having to do with an attempted and a completed armed robbery. The state’s case was founded on the testimony of two men (Jefferson and Waters) who had… Read more
Defense attorneys hear an awful lot about the “importance of finality” in criminal cases–especially at the §974.06 stage of proceedings. What about the victims? What about the waste of additional judicial resources? There must be a stopping point! Do those arguments really make sense if the wrong person was convicted? The latest edition of The… Read more
State v. David McAlister, Sr., 2014AP2561, petition granted 9/11/17; affirmed 4/18/18; case activity (including briefs) Issues (copied from petition for review) 1. The central issue at trial was whether McAlister participated in the charged robberies. The state’s evidence on that point consisted entirely of the allegations of two confessed participants seeking to mitigate the consequences of their own… Read more
If California and Texas can do it, can Wisconsin do it too? Click here to see Professor Edward Imwinkelried’s new article on revising postconviction relief statutes to cover convictions resting on subsequently invalidated expert testimony. Who can name a type of expert testimony that has been recently invalidated… Read more
State v. Jesse Steven Poehlman, 2016AP1074, 7/5/17, District 1 (not recommended for publication); case activity (including briefs) The state charged Poehlman with various counts relating to two alleged incidents of sexual assault and battery of his wife–one in December 2014 and one in February 2015. The jury acquitted as to the earlier incident and convicted… Read more
SCOW’s recent decision in State v. Jeffrey Denny, which restricted the availability of postconviction DNA testing in Wisconsin, was a real heart-breaker. Essentially, SCOW held that to get state-funded DNA testing the defendant has to prove the results would conclusively remove him from the scene of the crime. In a decision the EvidenceProf Blog calls a… Read more
