October 2019

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 320808:  The trial court violated defendant’s right to due process and to present a defense by convicting her as a principal when she had been bound over purely on an aiding and abetting theory. Alternatively, trial counsel was ineffective for failing to obtain a pretrial ruling on the motion to quash.

BB 320822:  Defendant is entitled to resentencing where the trial court considered acquitted conduct in determining his sentence in violation of his due process rights.

BB 320825:  The denial of counsel at preliminary examinations should be structural error.

BB 320828:  The trial court violated appellant’s due process rights by empaneling a jury whose members were referred to only by juror numbers and by failing to give a proper cautionary instruction.

by John Zevalking

Associate Editor