Looks like NYU Professor Ann Washington has done the hard work for you. Her new article, How to Argue With an Algorithm: Lessons from the Compass-ProPublica Debate, strives to inform courtroom arguments over the integrity of algorithms used to predict risk during the sentencing process… Read more
4. Improper factors
State v. Marshawn Terell Johnson, 2017AP2445-CR, District 3, 3/19/19 (not recommended for publication); case activity (including briefs) In sentencing Johnson for possession of heroin with intent to delivery, the circuit court remarked that he’d traveled to Superior from Chicago to commit his crime. The sentencing court’s consideration of that fact did not violate the Privileges… Read more
State v. Angela L. Staten, 2018AP1506-CR, District 1, 3/19/19 (not recommended for publication); case activity (including briefs) Staten and her two co-defendants engaged in a course of tax fraud that netted them over $200,000 in tax refunds that didn’t belong to them. Staten, the first of the three sentenced, argues that her sentence was unduly… Read more
State v. Ashlee A. Martinson, 2017AP1889-CR, District 3, 2/20/19 (not recommended for publication); case activity (including briefs) Martinson was charged with two counts of first-degree intentional homicide for killing her mother and stepfather. She pled to second-degree intentional homicide based on her claim of adequate provocation, which is premised on a complete lack of self-control… Read more
State v. Kenneth Alexander Burks, 2018AP208-CR, 9/25/18, District 1, (not recommended for publication); case activity (including briefs) The court of appeals held that an officer’s testimony that another witnesses’s testimony was “very believable” did not qualify as “vouching” when considered in context. It also held that the circuit court did not impermissibly rely on its… Read more
State v. Marquis D. Walls, 2017AP1600-CR, District 1, 8/14/18 (not recommended for publication); case activity (including briefs) The court of appeals rejects Walls’s argument that the circuit court violated his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by pressuring him to admit guilt at sentencing and then used his failure to do so to impose a harsher sentence. Walls… Read more
State v. Patrick H. Dalton, 2018 WI 85, 7/3/18, reversing in part and remanding an unpublished court of appeals decision; case activity (including briefs) The supreme court holds there were exigent circumstances that allowed police to draw blood from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… Read more
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… Read more
