On Point

State v. Brady R. Adams, 2018AP174-CR, 1/15/19, District 3 (1-judge, ineligible for publication); case activity (including briefs)

Noting that no Wisconsin precedent addresses the issue in this case, the court of appeals follows United States v. Bohman, 683 F.3d 861 (7th Cir. 2012) and holds that the suspicion of illegal activity in a place is not enough to transfer that suspicion to anyone who leaves that place such as would justify an investigatory detention.

State v. Kimberly C. Thomas, 2018AP304-CR, 1/15/19 (1-judge opinion, ineligible for publication); case activity (including briefs)

On the morning of her final pretrial, Thomas called her lawyer’s office to say that she just got a job, had to start that day, and couldn’t make the conference. When she didn’t show, she was charged and convicted of bail-jumping. She asserted ineffective assistance of counsel because her lawyer didn’t defend her absence. Also, he was a witness to her bail-jumping, so he should have withdrawn before the case went to trial.

State v. Javien Cajujuan Pegeese, 2017AP741-CR, petition for review of a per curiam opinion granted 1/15/19; affirmed 5/31/19; case activity (including briefs)

Issue:

Whether the circuit court’s failure to personally insure that the defendant understood each constitutional right waived by his guilty plea entitled him to a Bangert evidentiary hearing to determine whether his plea was knowing, intelligent, and voluntary.

State v. Peter J. Hanson, 2016AP2058-CR, petition for review of per curiam opinion granted 1/15/19; case activity (including briefs)

Issues (from the petition for review):

Whether the admission of hearsay statements of a defendant’s deceased wife inculpating him in murder violates his right to confrontation?

Whether trial counsel is ineffective in failing to move to suppress inculpatory statements that the defendant made at a John Doe hearing where he was in custody and not properly Mirandized?

The odds of getting into Harvard are 5.2%. The odds of SCOTUS granting a petition for writ of certiorari are 1.2%–and only .5% if it is filed in forma pauperis. Yet our very own Andy Hinkel just did it. Without a supreme court clinic or an amicus curiae listed on his cert petition, without a filing fee or fancy formatting, Andy, relying on brute intelligence, persuaded SCOTUS to grant cert in State v.

Gerald Mitchell v. Wisconsin, USSC No. 18-6210, certiorari granted 1/11/19

Question presented:

Whether a statute authorizing a blood draw from an unconscious motorist provides an exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement.

Since Justice Abrahamson announced her retirement, SCOWstats (following Posner’s Cardozo: A Study in Reputation), has published a series of posts attempting to measure her influence on the law. Today’s post compares how often she and her colleagues for the past 43 years have been cited in law reviews. Guess who dominates? Click here.  She may be the most cited justice in Wisconsin history.

State v. Samantha H. Savage-Filo, 2018AP996-CR, 1/9/19, District 2 (1-judge opinion, ineligible for publication); case activity (including briefs).

Savage-Filo claimed that her trial counsel was ineffective for, among other things, failing to investigate electronic discovery and incorrectly assessing the strength of a video allegedly showing her take a purse (filled with jewelry) left in a cart at a store parking lot. S-F argues that the appalling quality of the video shows that the State had little evidence against her. Her trial counsel failed to appreciate this and pushed her to plead.

State v. Devon Maurice Bowser, 2018AP313, 1/8/19, District 3 (not recommended for publication); case activity (including briefs)

Bowser was charged with several offenses in two cases; the two cases involved alleged drug sales on two different dates (one in 2015, one in 2016) to two different CIs. He and the state struck a deal in which he pleaded to some counts in each file with the rest dismissed. But before he could be sentenced, Bowser learned that the CI from the 2015 sale was recanting his claims that Bowser had sold him the drugs. Bowser moved to withdraw all his pleas in both cases.

State v. Dionte J. Nowels, 2018AP1171-CR, 1/8/19, District 1 (not recommended for publication); case activity (including briefs)

Nowels pled guilty to hit and run. He later sought plea withdrawal because during his colloquy the trial court failed to state 2 of the crime elements that the State would be required to prove at trial. The trial court agreed with him on this point, so for the plea withdrawal hearing the burden shifted to the State to prove that Nowles knew and understood those elements when he pled.