State v. Paul E. Ayala, 2017AP1510, 7/3/18, District 1 (one-judge decision; ineligible for publication); case activity (including briefs)
Ayala was charged with OWI. A blood test showed a high level of Ambien in his system. He sought to defend on the ground of involuntary intoxication by presenting a pharmacologist’s testimony that he had a stomach condition that caused the drug to build up in his system. [continue reading…]
State v. Gerald P. Mitchell, 2018 WI 84, 7/3/18, on certification from the court of appeals; 2015AP304-CR, SCOTUS cert. granted, 1/11/19, vacated and remanded, 6/29/19; case activity (including briefs)
This is the supreme court’s third attempt to decide whether provisions of Wisconsin’s implied consent law comport with the Fourth Amendment. If you’ve been following along, you might have predicted the result: no majority opinion, no binding holding, and, as the lead opinion laments, a state of confusion going forward. Briefly: the lead, 3-justice opinion says “we overrule State v. Padley,” a court of appeals decision addressing a related (though not identical) issue, but it in fact does no such thing: it seems, in fact, to echo much of the discussion in Padley, and anyway, it’s a three-justice minority, and can’t overrule anything. A two-justice concurrence says the legislature can’t legislate away a motorist’s right to refuse consent to a search, but would hold that a blood draw of an unconscious OWI suspect doesn’t require a warrant anyway, despite a pretty clear statement to the contrary from SCOTUS. And a two-justice dissent also says the implied consent law doesn’t equal constitutional consent. So, just as in State v. Hager from this term, you have a result that favors the state, even though a majority of justices disagree with the state’s constitutional argument. [continue reading…]
State v. Patrick H. Dalton, 2018 WI 85, 7/3/18, reversing in part and remanding an unpublished court of appeals decision; case activity (including briefs)
The supreme court holds there were exigent circumstances that allowed police to draw blood from Dalton without a warrant after he refused to consent to a blood draw. But a majority of the court also holds that the sentencing judge erred by explicitly imposing a harsher sentence on Dalton because he refused to consent to the blood draw. [continue reading…]
State v. M.A.H., 2017AP1785 & 2017AP1786, District 1, 7/3/18 (one-judge decision; ineligible for publication); case activity
State v. K.C.H., 2017AP1787 & 2017AP1788, District 1, 7/3/18 (one-judge decision; ineligible for publication); case activity
M.A.H. and K.C.H. entered no-contest pleas to the continuing CHIPS grounds alleged in the petitions to terminate the parental rights to their children. They later challenged those pleas, arguing they weren’t voluntary because they were induced by a promise to allow additional visitation of the children, who were in foster care, pending a disposition hearing if they entered the pleas. Their challenge fails because there was no such promise. [continue reading…]
State v. Kyle Lee Monahan, 2018 WI 80, affirming an unpublished court of appeals decision, 2014AP2187, case activity (including briefs)
You wouldn’t know it from the opinions, but the parties here briefed (and WACDL filed an amicus brief on) a question of harmless error doctrine. When trying to decide whether a trial error is harmless, the court is to ask whether “the jury would have arrived at the same verdict had the error not occurred.” Monahan contended that since a jury, as finder of fact, is free to draw any reasonable inference from the evidence, the reviewing court must view the trial evidence in the light most favorable to the defendant–that is, not declare an error harmless unless there is no reasonable set of inferences that would lead the jury to acquit. He argued that the court of appeals had not done this–that it had instead taken a conviction-friendly view of the evidence, effectively substituting its own views for that of the hypothetical “reasonable jury.” In so doing, he said, the court of appeals had effectively turned the (ostensibly stringent) harmless error test to the (extremely forgiving) standard for sufficiency of the evidence. [continue reading…]
Terance Martez Gamble v. United States, USSC No. 17-646, certiorari granted 6/28/18
Whether the Court should overrule the “separate sovereigns” exception to the Double Jeopardy Clause.
State v. Dion Lashay Byrd, 2017AP1968, 6/26/18, District 1 (not recommended for publication); case activity (including briefs)
Byrd was convicted of making a bomb threat to the Fox 6 TV station in Milwaukee. He claims the sentencing court relied on two improper factors in imposing the maximum sentence for this Class I felony. First, he says the court coerced him into making self-incriminating statements during his sentencing allocution–statements that could not be used against him at sentencing under the Fifth Amendment. Second, he contends the court should not have based its sentencing decision on its stated dissatisfaction with the statutory maximum. [continue reading…]
State v. Delano Maurice Wade, 2017AP1021, 6/26/18, District 1 (not recommended for publication); case activity (including briefs)
Wade appeals his jury-trial conviction of sexual assault and false imprisonment. He argues that certain of his accuser’s statements, related by police officers on the stand, were hearsay, and that the court erred in addressing a jury question when he was absent. [continue reading…]
