Today’s Court of Appeals decisions are up, and I’m going to try opening a discussion thread for people to post what they see. The decision list is here; I’ve not yet figured out how to directly link to the decisions for one day only (there’s a way to do it and I’m blanking on what it might be) but if you click on the submit button, you’ll seem them.
Also, there is an informed take on the criminal cases before both the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court newly available from the Office of Indigent Appeals. They have former Justice Oliver Diaz commenting on criminal cases in both courts; he’s trying to have the commentary up a couple of days after the decision lists are out. I’ll update this post when his notes for the May 5th list become available. Meanwhile, here are his entries for the last few weeks since he began this process.
If you can, in addition to naming a case you want to mention, it would be handy to post a link. In comments, hyperlinks are typed in the following form, with the phrase [CASE LINK] replaced by a link to the case and [CASE NAME] its name:
<a href=”[CASE LINK]“>[CASE NAME]</a>
The first case from today would look something like this:
<a href=”"http://www.mssc.state.ms.us/Images/HDList/..%5COpinions%5CCO55381.pdf”>Whitley v. City of Brandon</a>
I’ll kick things off with some quick notes about Prater v. State,, the last one on the list. It’s a criminal appeal from Okhtibeha County, which is where Forrest Allgood is District Attorney. Prater’s original trial lawyer melted down– he was suspended from practice between the trial and the time for filing post trial motions. One odd issue is a “junk science” one– Allgood put on a dog handler who “testified that her bloodhound Hadley was able to trace [Prater's cofelon] Hudson from a trailer at Landers Trailer Park to the carport door at the Millers’ home. Weibel stated that a scent inventory confirmed that Hudson had been at the Millers’ home.”
Pretending that it’s expert testimony to have a dog compile a “scent inventory” and do this tracing is very suspect to me, regardless of the prior caselaw. Isn’t this one of the bits of baloney that Allgood used in the two innocence cases? Tucker?
There are some other issues in the case– the exclusion of an alibi witness, an odd prosecutor’s remark in closing referring to appeals– but I’ll leave it at this one for now.
Ferguson v. Lewis seems like an unfortunate decision to me, affirming *overnight* grandparental visitation where the minor, a teen, dislikes her grandmother’s continual slagging on the custodial mom.
Irving has a good dissent, which would be even better if he didn’t fall prey to the COA’s lazy habit of simply dumping pages of transcript quotation into the opinion, as opposed to selective quotation and, god knows, analysis.
I liked this (para. 26):
I should also point out that, in my view, the chancellor, as wise as he may be, and notwithstanding his noble and good intentions, is not qualified to make the determination that Kathryn is brainwashed. He is neither a psychologist nor a psychiatrist. I believe that such
a determination is best left to the experts who are schooled in such matters. That the chancellor, as the majority put it, “smelled the smoke of battle” does not mean that he, by that experience, was transformed to an omniscient, four-star general. Nor does it obligate us to abdicate our oversight responsibilities as an appellate court.
I hope the mom petitions for cert; grandparental visitation needs to be rethunk if the existing law can lead to a result like this.
NMC: If you want to link directly to the hand-down lists, the following links seem to work:
Court of Appeals: http://www.mssc.state.ms.us/Images/HDList/COAMM-DD-YYYY.html
Supreme Court:
http://www.mssc.state.ms.us/Images/HDList/SCTMM-DD-YYYY.html
Replace MM-DD-YYYY with the appropriate date in that form.
thanks, soms
The summaries of the Court of Appeals criminal cases from last Tuesday written by Oliver Diaz are up and can be read here. The only case worth even mentioning appears to be the one I brought up in the first comment. The criminal cases are Hudspeth (a dui homicide case where the issues revolve mostly around whether the blood alcohol content results should have been admitted), Wright (a fondling case with almost no issues raised), and Filliyaw (a case involving possession of crystal meth precursors).
There are five civil cases, one noted above by Anderson.