This isn’t the first time Ed Hunvald’s students have voted for him in great numbers. “Back when Lyndon Johnson was running for president, my students found out that there was an open seat for Boone County surveyor,” Hunvald recalled. “They ...

Tagged with: Criminal Law University of Missouri-Columbia

Where a defendant’s post-conviction counsel made an unsuccessful attempt to acquire the transcript but the record did not show whether counsel attempted to contact the defendant or whether he reviewed the defendant’s pro se motion or other documents, the denial ...

Tagged with: Abandonment Criminal Law Post-Conviction Relief

Where a defendant convicted of leaving the scene of an accident objected to an instruction that he claimed conflicted with the substantive law, the defendant’s interpretation would conflict with the goals of the statute, and the trial court did not ...

Tagged with: Criminal Law instructions

(1)Where a defendant admitted that he fired a gun five or six times into a parking lot stopping to un-jam the gun between shots, and the defendant then left the scene for a girlfriend’s home, then a hotel and finally ...

Tagged with: Criminal Law Deliberation First-Degree Murder Juror Misconduct

Even though an officer secured the consent of a resident to search an apartment by claiming she only wanted to enter the residence to seize a marijuana pipe, the trial court did not err in finding the consent to be ...

Tagged with: Consent Criminal Law Search Voluntariness

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 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 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