For our subscribers

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.
 
MSC 163224
While an attorney may not always be ineffective for allowing his or her client to submit to a polygraph examination, in defendant’s case, defense counsel’s performance was objectionably unreasonable where defendant was just 18 years old, had no experience with the criminal justice system, and where defense counsel failed to protect his interests.

MSC 164790
Because defendant’s application for leave to appeal divested the trial court of jurisdiction over “those aspects of the case involved in the appeal,” the trial—the appeal’s subject—was automatically stayed.

COA 352620
The Michigan Supreme Court’s decision in People v Yeager requires this Court to find defendant was prejudiced when his trial counsel failed to request a voluntary manslaughter instruction.

COA 358142
Because police interrogated defendant without administering Miranda warnings—and interrogated him a second time after he requested counsel, without securing him a lawyer—it was plain error to admit defendant’s statements. In the alternative, defendant received ineffective assistance of counsel.

COA 359675
Defendant was denied the effective assistance of counsel when his attorney failed to object to inadmissible expert testimony about the decedent’s manner of death and the credibility of other prosecution witnesses, which invaded the province of the jury.

COA 361106
Defendant received ineffective assistance of counsel where defense counsel failed to strike numerous jurors who expressed bias and doubts about defendant’s presumption of innocence, failed to object to the prosecutor’s admission of other acts evidence, failed to properly subpoena the defense’s only witness, and failed to object to the prosecutor’s discussion of the “domestic violence cycle” during closing argument. While each one of defense counsel’s unprofessional errors alone is enough to warrant a new trial, the cumulative effect of such errors certainly requires a new trial.

COA 362124
Defendant’s right to a speedy trial was violated by the over three-year delay between his arrest and trial.

COA 363037
Defendant’s trial defense counsel was constitutionally ineffective for failing to object, under MRE 401 and 403, to a recorded jail call where he told his sister he would accept the prosecutor’s plea offer if it accompanied by a sentencing agreement to one year.

COA 363307
Defense counsel performed deficiently in failing to request a specific unanimity instruction on Count 4. Defendant was prejudiced and, therefore, denied his right to the effective assistance of counsel.

John Zevalking
Associate Editor