On Point: B. Published opinions

State v. Daniel A. Griffin, 2019 WI App 49; case activity (including briefs)

Someone killed a young child in Griffin’s home. Both Griffin and the child’s mother were present at the time. What evidence was the jury allowed to hear about who committed the crime? If you guessed “any remotely relevant evidence implicating Griffin” (whom the state had charged) and “no evidence implicating the mother” (whom it had not) then you are a scholar of Wisconsin evidentiary law.

We’re a bit slow to report this (we blame the dog days of summer), but on July 31, 2019, the court of appeals ordered the publication of the following criminal law related decisions:

State v. Courtney C. Brown, 2019 WI App 34 (extension of stop for seat belt violation to conduct search of car was lawful)

Lueders v.

State v. Malcolm J. Sanders, 2019 WI App 52; case activity (including briefs)

Sanders is black, and the DA struck the only black jurors from serving on his case because, even though they said they could be fair, they had had prior bad experiences with police, including being the subjects of racial profiling. Judges Gundrum and Neubauer held that the DA did not discriminate. But in another “must read” dissent, Judge Reilly said:

It is a perversion of justice to accept the reasoning that because we have unfairly treated blacks (or any class of people), we can then use our wrongful acts to prevent blacks from serving on juries. Utilizing our unfair treatment of blacks as a valid “race neutral” reason to keep blacks off juries is itself discrimination. Dissent, ¶16.

State v. Medford B. Matthews, III, 2019 WI App 44; case activity (including briefs)

It’s a crime in Wisconsin to have sex with a person under 18. Specifically, it’s a misdemeanor, if that person is 16 or older—like the 17-and-a-half-year-old alleged victim here. But, it’s tough to have sex without (1) being in a private (or “secluded”) place and (2) exposing one’s genitals. And while the legislature has codified the obvious difference between having sex with,

State v. David Gutierrez, 2019 WI App 41, petition for review granted, 11/13/19, reversed in part and affirmed in part, 2020 WI 52; case activity (including briefs)

The circuit court allowed the state to admit testimony that Gutierrez’s DNA wasn’t found after testing of relevant evidence state as well as testimony about why his DNA might not be found; it did not, however, allow Gutierrez to admit evidence that the DNA of other men had been found. This was error.

On June 26, 2019, the court of appeals ordered the publication of the following criminal law related decisions:

James P. Moran v. Wisconsin Department of Justice, 2019 WI App 38; case activity (including briefs)

James Moran was convicted of a felony in Virginia. That state has a procedure by which a person can petition to have his or her right to own a gun restored, and Moran’s petition was successful. So he can buy a gun there. Can he buy one here?

Bill Lueders v. Scott Krug, 2019 WI App 36; case activity (including briefs)

Here’s a non-criminal case that may nevertheless prove useful to your criminal practice, if you seek information via the open-records law. Lueders (a reporter) sent an open records request to Krug (a state legislator)’s office, asking for emails referring to a particular set of subjects. Krug’s office responded by supplying paper printouts of the requested emails; Lueders replied that he specifically wanted an electronic version of the emails, which Krug’s office refused to give him. The court of appeals now upholds the circuit court’s ruling that Lueders was entitled to the electronic data.

State v. Courtney C. Brown, 2019 WI App 34, petition for review granted, 10/15/19, affirmed, 2020 WI 63; case activity (including links to briefs)

This is a published, split decision with a vigorous, showstopping “concurrence” by Reilly. Neubauer and Hagedorn hold that after writing Brown a ticket for a seatbelt violation, an officer’s request that he exit his car and consent to a search (where he was looking for drugs and weapons) was part of the traffic stop’s original mission.  Reilly “concurs” only because he can’t defy SCOW’s recent opinions in State v. Floyd and State v. Wright, which he regards as intellectually dishonest and akin to the Dred Scott decision.

On May 29, 2019, the court of appeals ordered the publication of the following criminal law related decisions:

State v. Michael J. Scott, 2019 WI App 22 (the exclusionary rule applies to property forfeiture actions; but so does the good-faith exception)

State v. Mose B. Coffee, 2019 WI App 25 (OWI arrest automatically permits a search of the vehicle and all the containers within it)