Daily Opinion Summaries | ||||||||
Summaries for January 6, 2016
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United States v. Slizewski
Madison, Wisconsin Detective Peterson prepared an affidavit for a warrant to search Slizewski’s car, describing four recent robberies. A search of his rental car revealed a gun in the trunk. Slizewski moved to suppress the gun, arguing that Peterson misrepresented and omitted critical information in his search‐warrant affidavit, necessitating a Franks hearing. The district court denied the motion, and Slizewski pleaded guilty as a felon in possession of a firearm, but reserved his right to challenge the denial of his motion. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, upholding the district court ruling that any misstatements or omissions were unintentional or immaterial. Peterson supplied ample, truthful reasons to believe that evidence of the armed robberies was in the car.
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United States v. Poulin
In 2013, the district court sentenced Poulin to two concurrent 115-month terms of imprisonment followed by concurrent life terms of supervised release after he pled guilty to receipt and possession of child pornography. The Seventh Circuit vacated, holding that the district court erred by not addressing a principal argument in mitigation and by not providing reasons for imposing the maximum term of supervised release and that the record lacked necessary reasoning for review of the validity of the special conditions. On remand, the district court resentenced Poulin to concurrent 84-month terms of imprisonment on both counts of conviction, followed by a 10-year term of supervised release, with 13 standard conditions of supervision and seven special conditions, without making findings. The Seventh Circuit vacated disputed conditions of supervised release and remanded for resentencing, noting the need for supervised-release conditions that are “properly-noticed, supported by adequate findings, and well-tailored to serve the purposes of deterrence, rehabilitation, and protection of the public.”
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Williams v. Brooks
Officer Brooks conducted a traffic stop of Williams for failing to activate his turn signal prior to changing lanes. Williams did not cooperate with instructions from Brooks and Officer Kehl, which led to a physical confrontation. Sergeant Trump arrived at the scene. Officer Brooks arrested Williams for resisting law enforcement. A state court judge dismissed the charge. Williams sued under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging false arrest, excessive force, and failure to protect in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Seventh Circuit affirmed summary judgment in favor of the officers, relying on a videotape of the incident from a dashboard camera and rejecting arguments that there were material questions of fact as to the unlawful stop and arrest claims, excessive force claim, and failure to protect claims. The court also upheld the district court’s decision to not consider the state court’s findings and to use and rely on the pretrial diversion agreement
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John DodgeThe Moody’s Investor Service applied the Ba3 rating to the Chicago Board of Education’s $6.2 billion in debt.CHICAGO (CBS) — One day after the city of Chicago took a big hit to its credit rating, a leading bond-rating agency further downgraded the Chicago Public Schools debt to “junk” status.
Like the city, CPS is facing a huge problem with increasing required contributions to teachers’ pensions.
“The Ba3 rating reflects CPS’s steadily escalating pension contributions and use of reserves to fund those contributions,” Moody’s said. “We believe pension costs will place increasing strain on the district’s precarious financial position absent material revenue growth or expenditure reduction, both of which appear increasingly difficult for the district to achieve.”
The rating means the school system’s ability to pay off its debt is at risk. It also means it will cost more for CPS to borrow in the future.
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