Missouri Lawyers Media Missouri legal news and public notices

Where a defendant challenged the application of the escape rule to dismiss his motion for post-conviction relief, the judgment is reversed and remanded because the error asserted in his amended motion occurred after he was returned to custody, so the ...

Tagged with: Criminal Law Escape Rule Post-Capture Error Post-Conviction Relief

Where a trial court dismissed an indigent defendant’s pro se Rule 24.035 motion as untimely without appointing counsel, the motion court was required to appoint counsel for the defendant even though the motion was untimely, so the judgment is reversed ...

Tagged with: Appointment Of Counsel Criminal Law Post-Conviction Relief

Where a three-judge panel of the appellate court decided a case on direct appeal, rather than on a writ of mandamus filed by the state while the appeal was pending after an order from the Missouri Supreme Court re-transferring the ...

Tagged with: Criminal Law Direct Appeal Supreme Court Transfer

Father appealed from the termination of his parental rights to his daughter C.E.B. on the statutory grounds of neglect, after the trial court found father suffered from a mental condition and chemical dependency and had repeatedly failed to provide for ...

Tagged with: Domestic Relations Neglect Termination of Parental Rights Weight of Evidence

Defendant was found guilty of sexual abuse and felony attempted enticement of a child. At trial, the state offered two witnesses who testified that defendant had, years ago, offered them money to expose themselves to defendant. On appeal, defendant challenged ...

Tagged with: Admission of Prior Bad Acts Criminal Law Questioning of Family Member’s Prior Bad Acts sexual abuse

Movant, serving five concurrent prison terms for various sex crimes, moved for post-conviction relief alleging ineffective assistance of trial counsel, who chose to make a unitary rather than offense-specific defense that all three victims were lying and failed to request ...

Tagged with: Categorically Unreasonable Strategic Decisions Criminal Law ineffective assistance of counsel Post-Conviction Relief

Where a defendant in a DWI case argued that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to call his doctor to testify about his illnesses and medication side effects, the testimony would not have provided a viable defense and the ...

Tagged with: Criminal Law effectiveness of counsel Post-Conviction Relief

Defendant was convicted of possession of controlled substances after police executed a search warrant on her home, finding a glass pipe with methamphetamine residue that witnesses claimed defendant used to smoke methamphetamine the night before. During her interrogation, defendant claimed ...

Tagged with: Criminal Law Evidence of Possession Possession of Controlled Substances Sufficiency Of Evidence

Where a defendant, who was sentenced to life without eligibility for parole for 50 years plus two life sentences for capital murder committed as a 16-year-old, sought habeas relief, State ex rel. Carr v. Wallace was applicable because the defendant ...

Tagged with: Criminal Law Habeas Relief life sentence

(1)Where a landlord challenged a judgment for a tenant on her claim for breach of the implied warranty of habitability, the 2017 lease and its exculpatory clause were immaterial because sufficient evidence showed that the tenant’s damages occurred when the ...

Tagged with: Exculpatory Clause Implied Warranty Of Habitability Landlord-Tenant Residential Lease

Where a father claimed his ex-wife fraudulently, negligently and intentionally misrepresented that he was the father of her three children when paternity testing eventually showed that he was not the father of the second child, the trial court properly dismissed ...

Tagged with: Domestic Relations Emotional Damage misrepresentation paternity