People v. State

Last week a panel of the Indiana Court of Appeals decided Anthony Dye v. State of Indiana, affirming, by a vote of 2-1, Dye’s twenty-year sentence for Unlawful Possession of a Firearm by a Serious Violent Felon and the jury’s finding that he is a Habitual Offender, by virtue of which his sentence was enhanced by thirty years.

Dye was the “victim” in a case I’ve talked about a lot here on this blog, Tyrus Coleman v. State of Indiana. Dye’s conviction for Unlawful Possession of a Firearm by a Serious Violent Felon was based on the same tragic incident in 2007 on which Tyrus Coleman’s conviction for the Attempted Murder of Dye was based.

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Like these cops, who “chose to sack a man instead of shooting him in the Tenderloin early this morning, even after he drew a .380.” (Via Fark)

And some cops aren’t, like this local cop who shot and killed an unarmed man who’d led police on a pursuit before crashing into a building:

The chase ended after ten minutes when Bledsoe crashed his truck into the main building at Faubian Plumbing, Heating & A/C Inc. The business located in the 700-block of E. Lincoln Ave. saw nearly $10,000 in damage.

Police say Bledsoe tried to dislodge his truck from the building by flooring the accelerator as police surrounded him. After refusing to stop, Bledsoe was shot once in the neck.

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I consider myself neither exceptionally brave nor a paragon of chivalry, but if I was a state supreme court justice and an angry sister justice rushed up to me and got in my face, I don’t think I’d “reflexively” put my hands around her neck, as Justice David Prosser of the Wisconsin Supreme Court recently did. I think I’d have the presence of mind and the dignity to wait until she actually did something like smack me in the face before I tried to choke her.

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— reversing the Indiana Court of Appeals to reinstate a criminal conviction for no good reason (as they also recently did in Barnes and Coleman).

The facts in Brenda Moore v. State were not in dispute:

The defendant had consumed two tall cans of beer at her sister’s house on the evening of December 5, 2008. A friend of the defendant’s brother asked for a ride to visit a friend. The defendant explained to him that she could not drive because she had been drinking but that he could drive her car if he had a license. The brother’s friend then drove the defendant’s car with the defendant riding as a front seat passenger. When an Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Officer pulled over the car because the license plate light was not working, the officer determined that the driver did not have a valid driver’s license and that the defendant could not operate the vehicle because she was intoxicated.

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Jamison Koehler cites Ashe v. Swenson (1970) as currently his favorite U.S. Supreme Court case. In a comment on his post I wrote: “If you like Ashe, you might also like Yeager. Until recently these used to be my favorite U.S. Supreme Court cases too.”

What recently changed my mind about these cases is the Indiana Supreme Court’s decision in Tyrus Coleman v. State (2011), and the utter failure of these cases to do Mr. Coleman (whom I represented at trial) any good. Now when I read Yeager the only significant thing about the case seems to me to be the fact that the defendant, Mr. Yeager, was an Enron executive.

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People of the State of Colorado v. Charles La Voie (1964), via Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy:

The defendant in error, to whom we will refer as defendant, was accused of the crime of murder in an information filed in the district court of Jefferson county. He entered a plea of not guilty and a jury was selected to try the case. At the conclusion of the evidence, the trial court, on motion of counsel for defendant, directed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty. It was the opinion of the trial court that the evidence was insufficient to warrant submission of any issue to the jury in that the sum total thereof established a clear case of justifiable homicide. The district attorney objected, and the case is here on writ of error requesting this court to render an opinion expressing its disapproval of the action of the trial court in directing the verdict of not guilty.

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I borrow the words of a commenter on a local story about the Indiana Supreme Court’s reversal of the Indiana Court of Appeals’ reversal of an innocent man’s attempted murder conviction and 45 year sentence, who writes:

First and foremost I know none of the individuals nor any of their family members involved in this. Having only followed coverage of this trial by this media. This is one of those traits of our court system that continues to perplex me. The Indiana Court of Appeals after careful consideration appeared to side with argument presented on behalf of Tyrus Coleman. The Indiana Supreme Court upon review of essentially the same evidence in turn rendered decision in total opposition to the lower court findings. Keep in mind, aside from the local trials these findings were not rendered by empaneled novice jurors. We as society are to then believe justice has truly been served in spite of the contradictions presented by our own court system.

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Hard on the heels of its holding that the right to reasonably resist an unlawful police entry into a home is no longer recognized under Indiana law, the Indiana Supreme Court has issued another opinion today, reversing the Indiana Court of Appeals’ reversal of an innocent man’s conviction and 45 year sentence.

There’s not much I can say. Words, including the words of which the law is made, are worthless. I represented that innocent man at trial.

As Patrick says:

[T]here is a rule older and superior to that of the Constitution.  Many Americans do not believe that to be the case.  There is a philosophical divide in America, with the Justices of the Indiana court, and their Constitution, on one side, and a different law on the other.

One American called it “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”.

One Englishman called it “the Law of the Jungle”. [Link added.]

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Here it is. The smiling face of Corporal Jeremy Morlock, a disgrace to the human race. Why is the corpse whose head he’s holding up naked? What unspoken and unspeakable atrocities did Morlock and his brothers-in-arms commit against this innocent son of a farmer before they finally killed him for shits and giggles? And Jeff Gamso almost had me convinced that the death penalty is never justified. And here I am in my last post implying that God dwells within each and every human being. Morlock and those like him are the best argument there is against the existence of God.

Or maybe it’s really not Morlock’s fault. Maybe war just does that to people. In which case we should never, ever, go to war, unless it’s actually to defend ourselves. We should bring all of “our” troops home this very minute.

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I wrote my last post, about MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail and a wrongly imprisoned former client whose freedom hangs in the balance pending the pronouncement of five fallible men in Indianapolis, very early this morning before going to sleep for the night. I dreamed, vividly, that they had set him free. I was crest-fallen when I woke up and realized it was “just a dream.”

Even so, I still have a dream.

Read the whole thing.

Today I’m thinking, as I do every day, of another black man wrongfully imprisoned because of the color of his skin, whom I’m honored to call a friend; and praying from the depths of my soul that some day soon he will be free at last.

In praise of Jeff Gamso for this excellent post — even though Jeff doesn’t think I’m a real criminal defense lawyer (“RCDL”) and on rare occasions indulges in drivel — and in praise of the Iowa Supreme Court for the excellent reasons cited in Jeff’s excellent post.

This is precisely the kind of post I meant when I recently wrote:

I admire but can’t hold a candle to those bloggers like Jeff Gamso and many others who regularly offer substantive, insightful and practical posts on the criminal law (i.e., the law criminal defense attorneys are actually constrained to deal with, rather than the Law I like to occupy myself with). Don’t get me wrong. Some of the happiest times in my life have been when I’ve had the (more…)