Missouri Lawyers Media Missouri legal news and public notices

Where the state showed that a defendant in an involuntary manslaughter case drove on the wrong side of the road and was intoxicated, the evidence was sufficient to show that the defendant was criminally negligent to support the conviction, and ...

Tagged with: Criminal Law evidence Involuntary Manslaughter

Where a defendant claiming error in his sentencing brought a direct appeal from a guilty plea, the claim was outside of the appellate court’s limited review of guilty pleas and his appropriate remedy was to file a Rule 24.035 motion. ...

Tagged with: Criminal Law Guilty Plea sentencing

Where a husband appealed a trial court’s judgment granting his wife a full order of protection against him, the order expired during the pendency of the appeal, so the case is dismissed as moot. Appeal is dismissed. Carlisle v. Carlisle ...

Tagged with: civil practice mootness Order Of Protection

Where a defendant’s attorney did not object when the state at a plea hearing added a caveat to the defendant’s plea agreement, the defendant was entitled to an evidentiary hearing on his allegations of ineffective assistance of counsel because he ...

Tagged with: Criminal Law Guilty Plea Post-Conviction Relief

Where a citizen of Cameroon challenged a final order of removal and denial of her application for asylum and withholding of removal, the inconsistencies in the immigrant’s statements supported the immigration judge’s adverse credibility determination and it was not error ...

Tagged with: immigration

Where the testimony of an immigrant from El Salvador seeking asylum was inconsistent as she described incidents of religious persecution, the immigration judge was entitled to request corroboration  and the immigrant’s failure to provide corroboration properly resulted in an adverse ...

Tagged with: asylum credibility immigration Persecution

Even though an employee benefits plan included two provisions in its arbitration agreement that were in violation of ERISA, arbitration could proceed with the invalid terms severed, so the judgment of the district court denying the order to compel arbitration ...

Tagged with: Enforceability ERISA

Where officers saw defendant run from an apartment and a neighbor told the officers that the defendant had dropped a bag in the area, which was revealed to contain drugs, the officers had probable cause to make a warrantless arrest ...

Tagged with: Criminal Law plea agreement Warrantless Arrest

Where a defendant who pleaded guilty to illegal re-entry of the country argued that his 46-month sentence was substantively unreasonable, the district court’s explanation that the defendant had a serious criminal history that warranted no more patience was not unreasonable, ...

Tagged with: Criminal Law Illegal Reentry Reasonableness sentencing

Where a defendant who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine base was sentenced to the mandatory minimum of 120 months, the defendant’s due process challenge to the mandatory minimum sentence is foreclosed by the court’s decision in U.S. v. ...

Tagged with: Criminal Law Mandatory Minimum sentencing

(1)Where officers found an electronic digital scale, jeweler-sized bags and a razor blade with cocaine residue when executing a search warrant, a reasonable officer would believe that the defendant was engaged in drug trafficking so the incriminating nature of a ...

Tagged with: Criminal Law Seizure sentencing