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.

Tagged with: Confrontation Clause Jenifer Dorow Sixth Amendment toxicology Wisconsin Supreme Court

“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.

Tagged with: Fourteenth Amendment Sixth Amendment

A Wisconsin man convicted of poisoning his wife 15 years ago was improperly tried because he couldn't confront his dead wife and her "letter from the grave" implicating the husband as the primary suspect, a federal judge has ruled.

Tagged with: 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Bruce Schroeder Craig Albee homicide Mark Jensen Sixth Amendment William Griesbach Wisconsin Supreme Court

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.

Tagged with: FDA Fifth Amendment Sixth Amendment U.S. Supreme Court

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.

Tagged with: Samuel Alito Sixth Amendment U.S. Supreme Court

Fifty years ago today, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black delivered the unanimous, nine-page majority opinion in Gideon v. Wainwright.

Tagged with: Kathleen Stilling Kelli Thompson Michael O'Hear Mike Gonring Quarles & Brady right to counsel Sixth Amendment U.S. Supreme Court

A decision from the U.S. Supreme Court that a seminal Sixth Amendment rights case is not retroactive has provided clarity for attorneys while dashing the hopes of thousands of defendants.

Tagged with: 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Clarence Thomas Elena Kagan Ruth Bader Ginsburg Sixth Amendment U.S. Supreme Court

A four-time OWI defendant will get another chance to prove he did not knowingly waive his right to legal counsel in two earlier OWI cases, according to a recently issued Wisconsin appellate court opinion.

Tagged with: OWI Sixth Amendment

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.

Tagged with: Antonin Scalia Elena Kagan robbery Samuel Alito Sixth Amendment Sonia Sotomayor U.S. Supreme Court

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.

Tagged with: 1st Circuit Apprendi v. New Jersey Sixth Amendment Stephen Breyer Supreme Court

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.

Tagged with: deportation Padilla v. Kentucky Sixth Amendment Supreme Court U.S. Supreme Court

A criminal defendant could assert an ineffective assistance of counsel claim with respect to plea deals that his lawyer failed to communicate to him before they expired, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 5-4.

Tagged with: Anthony Kennedy Antonin Scalia Clarence Thomas John Roberts Samuel Alito Sixth Amendment Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether criminal fines are subject to the constitutional requirement that a jury decide sentencing factors that increase a penalty beyond the prescribed statutory maximum.

Tagged with: Apprendi v. New Jersey certiorari Sixth Amendment Supreme Court

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.

Tagged with: Ann Walsh Bradley Craig Mastantuono David Prosser Patience Drake Roggensack Shirley Abrahamson Sixth Amendment

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 ...

Tagged with: Sixth Amendment