People v. State

David Savage writes in an article published yesterday in the Los Angeles Times and titled “The Supreme Court’s unlikely friend to criminals” [H/T How Appealing]:

Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court’s most outspoken and combative conservative, is not often described as friendly to criminals.

But in recent years, Scalia has led an unusual pro-defendant faction at the high court in reversing convictions for murder, drug dealing, wife beating and drunken driving.

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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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A commenter on my old post on 18 U.S.C. 2422(b) [which now mandates a minimum of 10 years in prison for using the internet to knowingly entice a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity] writes:

I was convicted of 2422(b) in 2002 by a jury in Los Angeles, CA (9th Circuit). My first jury was deadlocked and a mistrial was declared. The second jury was also deadlocked but after repeated instruction from the judge to further deliberate they eventually convicted.

. . .

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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…)