On Point: B. Published opinions

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)

State v. Traci L. Kollross, 2019 WI App 30; case activity (including briefs)

The circuit court held that the filing of a municipal court citation against Kollross for OWI 1st tolled the three-year statute of limitation for a criminal charge based on the same incident. The court of appeals disagrees and orders the criminal OWI charge against Kollross be dismissed because it was filed too late.

State v. Christopher L. Gee, 2019 WI App 31; case activity (including briefs)

Christopher Gee was accused of sexually assaulting two women at knifepoint; one of the women had come to Gee’s apartment building because someone there had agreed to pay her for sex. He admitted to police that he’d had sex with this second woman, but said it was consensual and he’d simply refused to pay her afterward–something he said he often did. (¶10).

State v. Sean R. Wolfe and State v. Donald Ray Ward, 2019 WI App 32; case activity here and here .

¶1  We hold that under established principles of finality, when a circuit court denies a RULE 809.30 postconviction motion in part and grants the motion in part such that further proceedings are required, an appeal cannot be taken until those further proceedings are completed. Because the judgments of conviction and the circuit court orders from which these appeals are taken do not dispose of the entire matter in litigation between the parties, we lack jurisdiction.

On April 24, 2019, the court of appeals ordered the publication of the following decisions:

Winnebago County v. C.S., 2019 WI App 16 (involuntary medication of committed prisoners)

Brown County Human Services v. B.P. & T.F., 2019 WI App 18 (requirements for pleading “abandonment” under § 48.415; summary judgment reversed)

State v. Mose B. Coffee, 2019 WI App 25; affirmed 6/5/20; case activity (including briefs)

This published decision should make for an interesting petition for review. The court of appeals rejects a prior unpublished opinion, State v. Hinderman, to hold:

¶13 . . . [W]hen an officer lawfully arrests a driver for OWI, even if alcohol is the only substance detected in relation to the driver, a search of the interior of the vehicle, including any containers therein, is lawful because it is reasonable to believe evidence relevant to the offense of OWI might be found. Thus, the search of Coffee’s vehicle in this case was lawful and the circuit court properly denied his suppression motion.

State v. Michael J. Scott, et al., 2019 WI App 22; case activity (including briefs)

Applying long-standing U.S. Supreme Court precedent, the court of appeals holds that the exclusionary rule can be used to defend against a civil forfeiture complaint filed by the state. But it also holds the state should have a shot at arguing the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule also applies, despite the state’s failure to assert this claim in the circuit court.