State v. Michael A. Durham, 2015AP1978-CR, 4/12/2016, District 3 (one-judge decision; ineligible for publication); case activity (including briefs) Police were dispatched in response to a 6:30 p.m. phone call from a neighbor about unintelligible yelling and “banging” that shook the walls of Durham’s residence. (¶2). After knocking and ringing the doorbell and receiving no response… Read more
K. Standards of Review
State v. Jimmie Lee Smith, 2016 WI 23, 4/7/16, reversing a published court of appeals decision, majority opinion by Roggensack, concurrence by Ziegler, dissent by Abrahamson (joined by A.W. Bradley); case activity (including briefs) You can’t accuse the majority of mere error correction in this decision. Although the State never asked SCOW to rewrite the… Read more
State v. Todd Brian Tobatto, 2016 WI App 28; case activity (including briefs) The news, in this otherwise run-of-the-mill case, is the standard of review. Tobatto raises an ineffective assistance claim rooted in trial counsel’s failure to strike a juror for bias. The judge who heard the postconviction motion was not the judge who ran the trial… Read more
State v. Robert A. Schoengarth, 2015AP1834-CR, 2/11/16, District 4 (one-judge decision; ineligible for publication); case activity (including briefs) The circuit court erroneously exercised its discretion when it ordered that police could not testify about Schoengarth’s performance on field sobriety tests. The judge apparently accepted Schoengarth’s argument that exclusion was appropriate because he had agreed to do… Read more
Musacchio v. United States, USSC No. 14-1095, 2016 WL 280757 (January 25, 2016), affirming United States v. Musacchio, 590 Fed. Appx. 359 (5th Cir. 2014); Scotusblog page (including links to briefs and commentary) Resolving a split among the federal circuits, a unanimous Supreme Court holds that when a jury instruction sets forth all the elements of… Read more
Questions presented: I. Whether the District Court was in error when it denied relief on Petitioner’s §2255 motion to vacate, which alleged that a prior Florida conviction for “sudden snatching,” did not qualify for ACCA enhancement pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §924(e). II. Whether Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015), announced a new… Read more
State v. James Lee Eady, Jr., 2016 WI App 12; case activity (including briefs) Under the forgiving standard for assessing the sufficiency of evidence, the state managed to introduce enough circumstantial evidence to prove that the bank Eady robbed was “chartered” by a state of the federal government, and therefore was a “financial institution” for purposes… Read more
State v. Davis Kevin Lewis, 2014AP2773-CR, District 1, 12/01/2015 (not recommended for publication); case activity (including briefs) Lewis (whose first name is itself a matter of dispute, (¶1 n.2)) brings three challenges to his conviction after trial; all are rejected. The state charged Lewis with sexual assault of K.W., a cognitively disabled man for whom he was a… Read more
