Seventh Circuit – Page 8 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

New Criminal Law Blogs

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:May 1, 2012
Post category:Computer Law Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process Seventh Circuit

Criminal law aficionados might want to check out two new blogs with Marquette connections. First, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Updates tracks new decisions by the Seventh Circuit in criminal cases. The authors are Amelia Bizzaro ’03, Tony Cotton ’05, Chris Donovan ’05, Josh Uller ’05, and your truly.

Second, Cybercrime Review explores “new technology, recent legal developments, and interesting arguments at the intersection of computers and the law.” The authors are a current Marquette student, Justin Webb, and Jeffrey Brown, a student at the University of Mississippi School of Law. In addition to being law students, both Justin and Jeffrey have impressive professional credentials in the IT field. Justin’s comment on GPS tracking and the Fourth Amendment appeared in the most recent issue of the Marquette Law Review.

SCOTUS to Decide on Padilla Retroactivity

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:April 30, 2012
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process Public Seventh Circuit U.S. Supreme Court

Earlier today, the Supreme Court granted cert. in Chaidez v. United States, 655 F.3d 684 (7th Cir. 2011). Chaidez held that the Court’s decision in Padilla v. Kentucky, 130 S. Ct. 1473 (2010), would not be applied retroactively to defendants whose convictions were already final when Padilla came out. In Padilla, the Court held that a lawyer performs below minimal constitutional standards when he or she fails to advise a client of the deportation risks of a guilty plea. Now, the Court itself will have an opportunity to determine whether its decision should have retroactive effect.

The majority and dissenting judges in Chaidez all agreed that the case turned on whether Padilla announced a new rule of criminal procedure, within the meaning of Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989). With only a couple of execeptions not relevant here, Teague prohibits retroactivity for new rules. So, the question in Chaidez seems to boil down to whether Padilla announced a new rule or merely applied the basic ineffective assistance test of Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984).

Collecting Judges, Past and Present

Post author:Joseph D. Kearney
Post published:January 30, 2012
Post category:Eastern District of Wisconsin Judges & Judicial Process Public Seventh Circuit

Tom Shriner’s recent remembrance of Judge Dale Ihlenfeldt said to law students and new lawyers that “you can—must—learn the lessons of the law (and life) from everyone, not just your professors, but your colleagues, your adversaries, your clients, and even from judges.” This last (neatly phrased) is the case, in my estimation, both of judges whom one knows and of others whom one has never met. One should collect judges, as Tom and I say to the students in our courses.

Two whom I have collected in my time in Wisconsin are Chief Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson and Seventh Circuit Judge Diane S. Sykes, L’84. While I have previously alluded to their friendly competition with one another on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, as it seemed to me, I do not seek to remember them here: They are very much with us. Rather, each herself had occasion in the U.S. Courthouse in Milwaukee, in the past year or two, to remember a late predecessor and friend: Judge Myron Gordon (pictured here, courtesy E.D. Wis.) in Chief Justice Abrahamson’s case, and Judge Terence T. Evans, L’67, in Judge Sykes’s. With permission, I wish to share these remembrances here.