August, 2017

Subscribers to the Criminal Defense Resource Center’s online resources, found at www.sado.org, have access to more than 1,800 appellate pleadings filed by SADO Attorneys in the last five years.  The brief bank is updated regularly and is open to anyone who wants to subscribe to online access.  On our site, briefs are searchable by keyword, results can be organized by relevance or date, and the pleadings can be filtered by court of filing.  Below are some of the issues presented in briefs added to our brief bank in the last few weeks. For confidentiality purposes, names of clients and witnesses have been removed.

BB 298258:  The trial court violated defendant’s due process rights by failing to consider an updated presentence report.

BB 297666:  The constitutional error in the total deprivation of defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel at the preliminary examination is not harmless error.

BB 297765:  The trial judge abused his discretion in denying the defense request for a further continuance of the trial, to allow the defense more time to locate and present an important defense witness, in violation of defendant’s constitutional right to present witnesses in his defense.

BB 297914:  Defendant was denied his right of confrontation and his right to fair trial by the admission, over objection, of taped conversations, and in particular the statements of a non-testifying confidential informant.

BB 297914:  The trial court clearly erred and denied defendant a fair trial by denying the motion to recuse the prosecutor due to a conflict of interest.

BB 298303:  Defendant’s right to due process was violated by the trial court’s denial of access to the complainant’s counseling records, where there is a reasonable probability that those records contain information necessary to the defense.