Appellate Documents of Officers Charged in Freddie Gray Death Published Online
By Michael Wein
In the past two weeks, some of the officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray have sought appellate and injunctive relief. Before officer Caesar Goodson was to go on trial last week, fellow officer William Porter, a potential witness in that case, challenged the trial court’s decision to — despite his own pending retrial after a hung jury — admit his testimony from that trial with use and derivative-use immunity in accordance with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441 (1972). See also United States v. Oliver North, 910 F.2d 843 (D.C. Cir. 1990) (requiring full Kastigar hearing on use of non-immunized testimony and possible taint thereof). On January 12, Porter, proposing an expedited appellate schedule, had his request granted by the Court of Special Appeals, with abbreviated briefing and oral arguments in March.
Welcoming 2016—or is it really 1984?
When George Orwell published his novel “1984” in 1949, it presented many impossibilities of the future—computers and other artificial intelligence, Big Brother watching every person’s move, and all of the incredible trappings of science fiction stories that many of us enjoy as a break from reality. As the real 1984 approached, technology had not achieved the level imagined in the novel: Computers were huge and immovable; portable phones looked like bricks; and the internet was a newfangled system that few people used.
Head out to Arizona for some appellate fun in the sun!
By Steve Klepper (Twitter: @MDAppeal)
It finally happened… winter temperatures are upon us after a warm El Niño December. I’d like to invite all of the blog’s readers to attend the DRI Appellate Advocacy program in Scottsdale, Arizona this February 10–12 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Registration information is at this link, and you can download the brochure here.
Faculty will include three U.S. Court of Appeals judges and two state supreme court justices. The program will be repeating my favorite event from last time – a moot court, followed by a simulated post-argument conference among the panel.
There’s no better time to visit Arizona than the dead of winter,[*] and this great program is a perfect opportunity to get out there. I hope to see you there!
[*] Good weather not guaranteed. El Niño works in mysterious ways.
Court of Appeals latches onto State’s laches argument to limit availability of coram nobis relief
In Jones v. State, No. 16, Sept. Term 2015, 2015 WL 8109905 (Md. Dec. 7, 2015), the Court of Appeals of Maryland significantly limited defendants’ ability to challenge their convictions and sentences through a writ of error coram nobis many years after the fact. Up until now, there have been many instances in which individuals in Maryland have had prior convictions overturned years after the fact because of a constitutional or other significant error that was overlooked at the time of conviction. That run of post-conviction successes may well be largely over after Jones.
With Mitchell v. Maryland Motor Vehicle Admin., Hard Cases Still Make Bad Law
The aged judicial adage, that hard cases make bad law — or, at least, not so good law — continues to hold true after the decision of the Court of Special Appeals in Mitchell v. Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration, Sept. Term 2014, No. 713 (Nov. 25, 2015).[i] Mitchell concerned a vehicular license plate displaying the Spanish word “mierda,” which translates as “shit” or, in Yiddish, “kakn” (as in “that’s a kakn bull story”), all terms that are often a useful expletive or noun in circumstances on the road and off. As vital or valuable to expression as those words may be generally (and regardless of the domestic dialect or foreign language in which they are spoken), there is, no doubt, something troublesome about their being displayed in traffic. In grappling with the matter in Mitchell, the Court of Special Appeals at least arguably reached the right result but for reasons that unduly and impermissibly compromise First Amendment protections in other contexts.
December 2015 Maryland Certiorari Grants
The Court of Appeals website has posted certiorari grants from its December 2015 conference. We have a whopping 10 grants. And yet it brings us to a less-than-whopping total of 80 for the year. There were 90 total grants by this time last year. It’s possible that the Court of Appeals will add some extra cases to its September Term 2015 docket at next month’s conference. If so, however, it would be the first time since January 2012, before Chief Judge Barbera took the reins from Chief Judge Bell and committed to deciding cases by the end of the term in which they were argued.
The list of this month’s certiorari grants, with questions presented, appears after the jump. Read More…
On remand from SCOTUS, Maryland Court of Appeals summarily affirms CSA in Kulbicki
By Steve Klepper (Twitter: @MDAppeal)
We have a breaking update in our coverage of the long-running Kulbicki case. Ten weeks ago, the Supreme Court summarily reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals of Maryland in Kulbicki v. State, 440 Md. 33 (2014), which had found ineffective assistance of counsel on grounds that the Court of Appeals raised sua sponte. Read More…
The Love Song of J. Anthony Kennedy
By Steve Klepper (Twitter: @MDAppeal)
Last year for the holidays we here are the Maryland Appellate Blog brought you pictures of the adorable Sonia Soto-minor. This year’s silliness is The Love Song of J. Anthony Kennedy, a poem in the latest issue of The Green Bag. You can click here for the poem. Read More…
No “sandbagging” allowed – the purpose behind the preservation rule
No “sandbagging” allowed. That was a message conveyed by the Court of Appeals recently in Peterson v. State, 444 Md. 105 (2015). The Court explained that the purpose behind the preservation rule – i.e.¸ the rule that provides that appellate courts will review only those issues that were raised and preserved in the trial court – is to avoid unfairness and to prevent “sandbagging.” Id. at 126. If a litigant wants an appellate court to review and correct what that litigant sees as an erroneous ruling made by the trial court, the litigant must have given the trial judge a fair chance to make the correct ruling and to fix any mistakes that he or she made. In other words, the trial judge shouldn’t be “sandbagged.” And as one of the cases cited by the Peterson Court demonstrates, the concern for fairness applies also to opposing counsel. Robinson v. State, 410 Md. 91, 104 (2009); see also e.g. In re Kaleb K, 390 Md. 502, 513 (2006) (holding that petitioner’s argument was not preserved and that allowing petitioner to raise on appeal a new argument, which had not been raised and argued in the circuit court, “would result in ‘sandbagging’ the State and the trial . . . court, which is the precise result that Rule 8-131(a) was designed to avoid”).[1]
16 Nominated to Court of Special Appeals
It’s been quite a busy week on the judicial-appointments front: On Tuesday, Gov. Hogan elevated The Hon. Michele Denise Hotten to the Court of Appeals, and, today, nominations for the at-large Court of Special Appeals opening were announced. Although the deep pool of 27 applicants has been somewhat pared down, the governor is still faced with the difficult task of selecting only one of the 16 impressively credentialed finalists, half of which are sitting circuit-court judges. Of those, three on the Prince George’s County bench (Judge Alves, Judge Geter, and Judge Serrette) would, if it didn’t work out for the at-large bid, be eligible to vie for Judge Hotten’s vacancy.
Maryland Appellate Blog 