Background: Shabtai pleaded guilty under a plea agreement to aggravated grievous bodily harm and possession of a dangerous drug not for personal consumption. He and two others encountered four young people in a Bat Yam park, identified one man as Arab from his accent, masked themselves, and returned to attack him while shouting racist abuse. The…
Held: The Supreme Court unanimously allowed the State’s appeal and replaced the community-service sentence with 24 months’ imprisonment, less time already spent in detention. All other components of the District Court’s sentence remained in force. The Court held that nine months of community service departed markedly from appropriate sentencing policy and failed to reflect the gravity of the planned, group assault,…
Background: Donyelle Michael Black was convicted of first-degree felony murder, armed robbery, and felony-firearm for crimes committed when he was 15. He received life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for felony murder. After the United States Supreme Court prohibited mandatory juvenile life-without-parole sentences and made that rule retroactive, Michigan prosecutors sought to reimpose Black’s sentence…
Held: The Michigan Supreme Court unanimously held that when a defendant indicates an intent to introduce expert psychological evidence based on an examination at a Miller hearing, the trial court may require the defendant to undergo a similar examination by a prosecution expert. That condition does not violate the federal or Michigan constitutional privilege against self-incrimination because the prosecution may use…
Background: Espire Infolabs Limited employed Amit Mohan Sharma as a project manager and seconded him to a private members’ club, where he had access to members’ personal data. After Espire told him that the secondment would end, Sharma said he had copied data concerning approximately 55,000 members and would reveal it unless he received £150,000. The…
Held: HHJ Jarman KC granted Espire summary judgment. Sharma did not dispute entering the settlement agreement or sending the principal emails and texts relied upon. Those communications established clear breaches of his obligations to delete and refrain from using confidential information, avoid prohibited statements, and not contact Espire’s customers or clients. The agreement expressly addressed the tax treatment of the termination…
Background: Joseph S. Paczkowski pleaded guilty in 2012 to first-degree unlawful sexual contact and sexual solicitation of a child. After his release from prison to home confinement in 2023, his probation conditions prohibited him from possessing pornography. In May 2024, he gave his probation officer a smartphone after reporting that an image of a young naked…
Held: The Delaware Supreme Court affirmed. It held that the Superior Court had jurisdiction because the revocation was based on the two violations identified in the probation report—not Paczkowski's use of YouTube—and that competent evidence supported both findings under the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard applicable to probation proceedings. The images, searches, testimony, and other evidence supported findings that he knowingly possessed child sexual…
Background: The Attorney-General sought orders restricting civil litigation by Ng Kai Hoe Raymond and Iris Koh Hsiao Pei, who are married and had instituted numerous proceedings individually or together. The application relied principally on unsuccessful litigation concerning the Health Sciences Authority, a defamation claim against Calvin Cheng, an action against the National University of Singapore and,…
Held: The High Court made a vexatious-litigant order against Ng. It found that he had habitually and persistently instituted vexatious legal proceedings without reasonable grounds, identifying four actions and seven applications that were substantively unmeritorious. The court also found that some proceedings served collateral purposes and that Ng’s conduct showed a pattern of using litigation as a preferred response to conflict.…
Background: An 18-year-old man sought to be adopted by his paternal uncle and the uncle’s wife, who had cared for him since he was seven months old. The application was supported by the young man, the proposed adoptive parents and a senior officer of the Department of Communities and Justice.
Held: Rees J was satisfied, for the purposes of s 4(2) of the Adoption Act, that the young man was of Aboriginal descent. The available evidence was insufficient to establish that he or an ancestor met every element of the definition of “Aboriginal person” in the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983 (NSW). Nevertheless, the Court placed substantial weight on the earlier…
Background: Jeremy Arrington was charged with 29 offenses arising from a 2016 attack in a Newark apartment. The evidence showed that he bound and stabbed occupants, forced a child to stab four victims, and shot one victim. Three people died. After a three-day hearing at which experts disagreed about whether Arrington was malingering, the trial court…
Held: The New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously affirmed, holding that a defendant must proffer expert testimony to assert an insanity defense under N.J.S.A. 2C:4-1. Determining whether a defendant had a “disease of the mind” and whether it prevented the defendant from understanding the nature or wrongfulness of the charged conduct involves complex matters beyond an average juror’s common knowledge.
Background: Lon Brandon Meeks was convicted in Bryan County of stalking after actual notice of a protective order and received a five-year sentence, with three years to serve and the final two years suspended. The protective order barred Meeks from contacting his ex-wife and her children directly or indirectly, including through social-media communications.
Held: The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the conviction and remanded with instructions to dismiss because the evidence was insufficient to prove that Meeks harassed his ex-wife. Under the applicable stalking statute, harassment requires a course of conduct “directed toward” the alleged victim.
Background: Styran Eddie Rivera filed a March 10, 2026 “second motion for response,” which the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court construed as a petition for an extraordinary writ. Rivera sought relief concerning a Rule 40 post-conviction motion dated November 5, 2025.
Held: The Hawaiʻi Supreme Court denied both petitions without prejudice. It held that Rivera should seek the requested relief in the circuit court, rather than through an original extraordinary-writ proceeding in the supreme court.
Background: Shabnam McAllister worked as a caretaker for Usha Gulati, beginning when Gulati was about 80 years old. McAllister cooked, shopped, did laundry, and spent most days at Gulati’s North Wales home. Gulati viewed her as almost a family member. In 2021, Gulati’s son reviewed bank records under a power of attorney and found numerous checks…
Held: The Superior Court affirmed in a precedential opinion. President Judge Emeritus Ford Elliott concluded that the Commonwealth presented sufficient circumstantial evidence that McAllister intentionally obtained money by maintaining a false impression and exploited a relationship of trust with an older adult. The factfinder was entitled to credit Gulati’s testimony about the agreed compensation and to infer intent from the repeated…
Background: Chris and Paula Bolte challenged the 2023 and 2024 assessments of their Ferdinand home, which the county initially valued at $191,900 and $193,900. Because the 2023 assessment had increased by more than five percent from the prior year, Indiana law placed the burden on the Dubois County Assessor to prove the property's correct value. The…
Held: Judge McAdam affirmed the Board on every issue. The Assessor had failed to provide a timely witness list, but the governing administrative rule said nondisclosure “may” justify exclusion; it did not make exclusion automatic. The Board therefore retained discretion. Because the Boltes had received the appraisal and knew through extensive prehearing litigation that the appraiser would support it, the Board…
Background: Shannon Golat worked as a Wisconsin state-court reporter for Judge Steven Anderson. She alleged that Anderson made sexist and sexual comments, displayed a mug bearing genital imagery, and tolerated inappropriate comments by others. Golat also complained about workplace conflicts, disciplinary investigations, and the court system’s response to an elbow injury that limited her typing and…
Held: The Seventh Circuit affirmed. On the hostile-work-environment claims, it concluded that several alleged comments were sex-specific but were neither objectively severe nor sufficiently pervasive. The court emphasized that the conduct was not threatening or understood as sexual advances, some of it was not directed exclusively at Golat, and approximately six comments by Anderson plus two comments by others occurred over…