Difficulties Arising Out of No-Merit Reports

Under Wisconsin Statute 809.32(1), an attorney representing a criminally convicted client on appeal must file a no-merit report if he or she:

concludes that a direct appeal on behalf of the [client] would be frivolous and without any arguable merit within the meaning of Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 738 (1967), and the [client] requests that a no-merit report be filed or declines to consent to have the attorney close the file without further representation by the attorney.

A no-merit report is essentially as it sounds, a report to the Court of Appeals stating that the client has no arguable case.  Once a no-merit report is filed, the client may choose to respond.  If the client does not respond, or does and the court finds that there are no meritorious claims, the court will affirm the conviction.

This situation, however, brings to light an interesting predicament for convicted individuals. 

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Prosecutorial Discretion in the John Doe Investigation

Over at the Shark and Shepherd Blog, Rick Esenberg has put up a post questioning whether the recently filed criminal complaint in the ongoing John Doe investigation of the County Executive’s Office during Scott Walker’s tenure justifies the time and expense spent thus far on the investigation. I posted several comments in response to Rick’s post, and it seems worthwhile to repeat those same points on the Marquette Law School Faculty Blog.

First of all, it is unlikely that the John Doe investigation will remain focused solely on the existence of campaign activity during employee working hours. According to press reports, the investigation is proceeding in the direction of investigating possible destruction of evidence and obstruction of justice. As I tell the students in my Corporate Criminal Liability class, a cover up will cause a defendant more trouble than the underlying crime.

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A Tale of Three States, Part 6: Happy Days

In the previous post in this series, I took the imprisonment data from Indiana, Minnesota, and Wisconsin back to 1991.  I’ve been interested, though, in pinpointing when exactly the Minnesota-Wisconsin imprisonment disparity arose, which requires going back further — much further, to the 1950′s.  Here are the numbers:

WI Imprisonment Rate (per 1000,000) Percent Change MN Imprisonment Rate (per 1000,000) Percent Change IN Imprisonment Rate (per 1000,000) Percent Change
1950 58.7 n/a 63.0 n/a 120.4 n/a
1955 61.6 4.9% 61.6 -2.2% 103.1 -14.4%
1960 69.5 12.8% 60.3 -2.1% 116.4 12.9%
1965 68.3 -1.7% 49.1 -18.6% 91.1 -21.7%
1970 67.3 -1.5% 41.7 -15.1% 79.6 -12.6%
1975 65.0 -3.4% 42.0 0.7% 73.0 -8.3%
1980 85.0 30.8% 49.3 17.4% 114.0 56.2%
1985 113.6 33.6% 55.9 13.4% 182.3 60.0%
1990 152.6 34.3% 71.9 28.6% 229.7 26.0%
1995 218.6 43.3% 105.1 46.2% 277.7 20.9%
2000 386.9 77.0% 126.8 20.6% 331.0 19.2%
2005 392.9 1.6% 173.1 36.5% 399.5 (est) 20.7%
2010 387.2 -1.5% 177.8 2.7% 459.9 15.1%

 

The numbers tell a remarkable story.  Here are some of the parts of that story that stand out for me:  

Continue ReadingA Tale of Three States, Part 6: Happy Days