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Tag Archives: Sixth Amendment

High court clears up Confrontation Clause conflict

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled that certain toxicology reports may be admitted at trial without testimony from or cross-examination of the authors of those reports without violating the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause.

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Attorneys must be given resources to defend criminals

“The right of one charged with crime to counsel may not be deemed fundamental and essential to fair trials in some countries, but it is in ours,” announced the U.S. Supreme Court in 1963 in first determining that the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution requires states to provide lawyers to the indigent accused facing a potential loss of liberty in a felony case.

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US Supreme Court to consider fight over frozen assets

When Kerri and Brian Kaley came under federal investigation for allegedly stealing medical devices, they took out a $500,000 line of credit on their New York house to hire lawyers. Yet after their indictment in 2007, prosecutors sought to prevent the Kaleys from using the money because the government intended to seize the house.

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US Supreme Court dismisses ineffective counsel case

After taking up and hearing arguments in a case considering whether a delay caused by a state’s failure to fund counsel for an indigent’s defense should be a factor in determining whether the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial was violated, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the case as improvidently granted.

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US Supreme Court takes up sentencing factors case

In a case that raises the question of whether judges, rather than juries, can constitutionally decide factors that could trigger an increase in the minimum sentence, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court seemed reluctant to shake up a sentencing scheme that Congress and the courts have relied upon for more than a decade.

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US Supreme Court: Criminal fines must be decided by a jury

Like other factors that increase a criminal defendant’s sentence, facts that determine the amount of criminal fines imposed on a defendant must be decided beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled at the end of the term in a 6-3 decision.

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Lawyers await Padilla retroactivity ruling

Two years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling that the Sixth Amendment requires criminal defense attorneys to warn noncitizen clients if a guilty plea carries a risk of deportation, the justices are poised to decide just how far back that constitutional protection extends.

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Fractured court leaves law in doubt

Four justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed recently that a defendant’s custodial statements were properly suppressed, because the defendant had already been charged, had retained counsel and the authorities knew he had retained counsel.

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10-1292 U.S. v. West

Sixth Amendment In court ID by lineup witnesses Where police conducted incustody lineup identifications while a defendant was unrepresented by counsel, and the district court ruled that the lineup was unduly suggestive but nonetheless held that lineup witnesses may be allowed to make incourt identifications, we reverse because the district court failed to make findings as to the admissibility of ...

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