New Right-to-Counsel Rulings Address Bail and Waiver

State courts in Maryland and Indiana have recently broken new ground in the right-to-counsel area.  First, a trial judge in Baltimore ruled inRichmond v. District Court that indigent defendants have a Sixth Amendment right to be represented by counsel at bail hearings.  The decision is described in more detail at The Blog of Legal Times.  Additional coverage appears in The Daily Record.

Second, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled in Hopper v. State that defendants who wish to waive their right to counsel and plead guilty must be advised of the benefits of having a lawyer during plea negotiations.  The United States Supreme Court had previously rejected such “formulaic” requirements for a valid waiver of the right to counsel in Iowa v. Tovar, 541 U.S. 77 (2004).  However, unlikeTovar, the new case was decided not on Sixth Amendment grounds but on the basis of the Indiana Supreme Court’s general supervisory authority over lower state courts.

If it is affirmed on appeal and replicated in other jurisdictions, the Baltimore ruling is likely the more significant of the two.  

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Best of the Blogs, Part I

This week we’re doing a two-part entry in our “Best of the Blogs” series. This post will cover last week’s developments. Part II will carry us up to the present.

Questions posed last week include: Can persons whose information has been exposed due to a computer security breach recover for the resulting “oogly” feeling? What happens when you ask a bunch of law professors from one school to write a “biographical dictionary” of famous lawyers? What are the risks of correcting exhibits to a multi-million dollar agreement at the last minute? Which well-known law prof blogger has extensive experience as a shelver in a public library? What does federal law say about how we professors select textbooks for our classes next semester? Find out below…

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NASA v. Nelson and Public Employee Informational Privacy

4United States Supreme Court 112904 Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court heard oral argument in the public employee informational privacy case of NASA v. Nelson (oral tanscript here). Rather than reinvent the wheel on this one, I want to direct reader’s to Prof. Lior Strahilevitz’s (Chicago Law) excellent analysis of the oral argument on PrawfsBlawg.

Here are some highlights: 

Having read the transcript, it seems likely that the Court will reverse the Ninth Circuit and hold that the government may ask open-ended questions as part of a security clearance process for government employees. Beyond that, though, very little is clear . . . .

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