January, 2018

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 302000:  The trial court violated defendant’s due process rights by failing to consider an updated presentence report.

BB 302024:  Defendant is entitled to resentencing because the judge violated defendant’s right to due process by sentencing him to the maximum allowed term for a felony drunk driving after previously serving as trial prosecutor for defendant’s previous drunk driving offenses.

BB 302191:  The sentence imposed against defendant violates the principle of proportionality and the trial court abused its discretion by exceeding the sentencing guidelines, especially where it failed to give any reasons for doing so and even failed to recognize that it was doing so.

BB 302404:  Where the defense challenged the accuracy of two of the listed prior convictions in the presentence report and challenged a separate indication that defendant had violated a probation term for a different conviction, the trial judge erred by failing to rule on the challenges and, if those listings were inaccurate, by failing to physically delete those listings from the presentence report.

BB 302419:  Defendant is entitled to resentencing because the trial court relied on inaccurate and legally irrelevant sentencing information.

BB 302455:  Defendant was denied the constitutional right to present a defense when the trial court refused to instruct the jury on his right to use force in self-defense or the defense of others.

BB 302730:  Defendant was denied his right to the due process of law and his constitutional right to a speedy trial by the inexcusable, extensive pre-arrest and post-arrest delay.

BB 302871:  The trial court erred in holding that there was no reasonable probability that the jury would have acquitted defendant had it heard expert testimony like that presented at the Ginther hearing.

BB 303012:  Defendant is entitled to resentencing because the trial court violated the right to meaningful allocution.

BB 302240:  The complete denial of counsel to defendant at his preliminary examination, a critical stage of the proceedings, is a structural error requiring automatic reversal.

BB 301953:  Defendant’s convictions for both carjacking and receiving/concealing a stolen automobile violated the prohibition on double jeopardy as there were no elements in the lesser offense that were different and needed to be proved.

BB 302015:  The prosecutor’s repeated misstatements of the law deprived defendant of her right to a fair trial.