Background: The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed Marvin Emmett Brown Jr.’s drug convictions and clarified two practical limits on criminal appeals: a suppression theory not timely presented to the district court is waived absent good cause, and coded communications concerning prior drug transactions may be admitted under Wyoming Rule of Evidence 404(b) when they help prove intent…
Held: The Supreme Court first held that Brown waived any challenge to the validity of Nako’s alert. Wyoming Rule of Criminal Procedure 12 requires suppression issues to be raised before trial, and Rule 12(g) generally treats an omitted claim as waived unless the defendant shows good cause. The same rule applies when a defendant files one suppression motion but advances a…
Background: The Supreme Court of Guam vacated Colleen Sherise Castillon Yurko’s three-year sentence for first-time methamphetamine possession because the judgment made drug treatment conditional rather than mandatory. Yurko, who had no prior criminal history, was convicted after a traffic stop led to the discovery of methamphetamine residue in glass pipes. The Superior Court imposed the statutory…
Held: Justice Robert J. Torres, writing for a unanimous court, held that the statute’s treatment requirement is unambiguous. The Legislature used two commands—“must also include” and “mandatory”—and did not qualify them with language such as “if available,” “when feasible,” or “recommended.” The alternative-program clause accounts for the possibility that treatment at the Guam Behavioral Health and Wellness Center may be unavailable:…
Background: A company manager and Bibi Roads Earthworks and Development Ltd. were charged with bribery, tax fraud, false corporate records, and money laundering. Property worth approximately NIS 7.5 million was provisionally seized under the Prohibition on Money Laundering Law. Under a later plea agreement, the defendants admitted bribery, the money-laundering charges were dismissed, and the parties…
Held: President Yitzhak Amit denied both applications. Although the appellate judgment was the Court’s first interpretation of Section 297(a)(2) as a forfeiture provision and recognized a mechanism for third-party objections, that degree of novelty did not meet the exceptional statutory standard for a further hearing. The earlier panel had followed ordinary interpretive methods, examining the provision’s text, legislative history, objectives, and…
Background: Emily A. Bickford and Matthew A. Bradeen shared parental rights and responsibilities for their child under a 2013 agreed order requiring them to confer and jointly decide major issues, including religious upbringing and medical care. In 2021, both parents sought sole authority over the child’s religious upbringing after disputes arose concerning the child’s participation in…
Held: The Maine Supreme Judicial Court affirmed. It held that strict scrutiny does not apply when a court allocates parental decision-making authority between two parents. Because both parents share the fundamental right to direct their child’s upbringing, a judicial allocation between them does not constitute state intrusion on that shared right. Courts may therefore allocate authority over religion, healthcare, or other…
Background: Pride Planning Limited sold funeral plans funded through the Pride Planning Trust. After funeral-plan providers became subject to FCA authorisation, Pride Planning elected not to pursue authorisation and agreed in October 2022 to transfer its business to Dignity Funerals Limited, an authorised provider. Thousands of customers opted into Dignity plans and purported to assign to…
Held: The Court appointed Lake under CPR 19.9 to represent all customers who elected to transfer their rights to Dignity, insofar as those rights were not validly assigned, and directed amendment of the particulars accordingly. Individual proceedings by thousands of customers would be impractical, and their materially similar interests made representative treatment consistent with the overriding objective. The Court also found…
Background: Terek Mikeson obtained a protection-from-abuse consent order against his former partner, Mertyle Umbrington, after alleging that Umbrington physically assaulted him in February 2024. The order originally was set to expire on May 16, 2025. After Mikeson moved for a two-year extension, a Family Court commissioner extended the order through July 18, 2025, to allow time…
Held: The Delaware Supreme Court affirmed. It held that Mikeson could not obtain a new PFA based on the same February 2024 incident that supported the prior consent order after he failed to seek review of the commissioner’s denial of his motion to extend that order. Because Mikeson omitted the police report from his appellate appendix, the court could not determine…
Background: DWL, an energy-technology and equipment supplier, contracted to provide equipment for DWM’s energy-production plant in Country X. After new international sanctions were imposed in 2022, DWL encountered supply difficulties. DWM withheld a milestone payment for commercial reasons, and DWL suspended the contract for non-payment and sanctions-related reasons. The parties disputed whether DWL remained obliged under…
Held: The High Court dismissed the application. Although neither party had cited Articles 45.6 and 54—the provisions the tribunal invoked when finding that Article 27B survived suspension—the survival question itself was squarely before the tribunal. Its reasoning flowed reasonably from DWM’s case and was not such a dramatic or unforeseeable departure from the parties’ submissions that the tribunal had to invite…
Background: In 2017, a Cuyahoga County jury found Robert D. Johnson guilty of attempted rape, aggravated burglary, burglary, abduction, assault, and criminal damaging. The trial court imposed an aggregate 12-year prison sentence. The Eighth District Court of Appeals affirmed his convictions and sentence, and the Supreme Court of Ohio declined discretionary review.
Held: The Supreme Court of Ohio affirmed the dismissal. It held that Johnson’s allegations concerned nonjurisdictional errors in the trial court’s exercise of jurisdiction, not defects that deprived the court of jurisdiction. Alleged irregularities involving indictment, arraignment, notification of rights, or counsel before arraignment therefore were not cognizable in habeas corpus and could have been raised on direct appeal.
Background: Jason Allen Miller fled after a Lincoln County sheriff's deputy tried to arrest him on an active warrant. During a high-speed pursuit on snowy Camp 32 Road, Miller accelerated his truck and struck Montana Highway Patrol Trooper Lewis Johnson. He was later apprehended after striking a Fish, Wildlife & Parks truck; officers recovered methamphetamine, testosterone…
Held: The Montana Supreme Court affirmed. The District Court did not abuse its discretion in permitting uniformed officers to attend the trial. The record did not show that the officers acted disruptively, drew attention to themselves, or engaged jurors, and jurors could reasonably view their presence as support for the injured trooper rather than intimidation. Miller also failed to preserve his…
Background: The plaintiff had served a notice of non-party disclosure on Gilchrist Connell Pty Ltd, the law firm acting for the defendant. The firm accepted service as at 23 February 2026 and objected to production, principally on legal professional privilege grounds. The plaintiff then applied under r 247 of the Uniform Civil Procedure Rules 1999 (Qld)…
Held: McCafferty J held that r 247(3), which ordinarily requires each party to bear its own costs on an application concerning a non-party objection, applied. The plaintiff's argument that the firm's objection was out of time was rejected: the parties' correspondence showed that they had treated service as occurring on 23 February 2026, making the objections timely.
Background: Blessings De La Cruz ran unopposed as a nonpartisan candidate for Hawaiʻi House District 44 in the August 8, 2026 primary. She received 41 votes. The Democratic candidates received 1,760 and 228 votes, respectively, and the Republican candidate received 900 votes.
Held: The Supreme Court entered judgment for the State. Treating the motion as one for summary judgment because it considered election-vote totals outside the complaint, the court held that no genuine factual dispute existed.
Background: Jason Hubbell was convicted of murdering Sharon Myers, who disappeared from her Columbus workplace in May 1997 and was later found strangled near Teal Marsh at the Atterbury Wildlife Preserve. Witnesses had described a roughly six-foot-tall blond man and a white cargo van near Myers before she vanished. Hubbell had brown hair and owned a…
Held: The Court of Appeals affirmed. Judge Mathias concluded that the undisclosed material was favorable to Hubbell, had been suppressed by the State, and was material when considered cumulatively against the entire trial record. Materiality did not require Hubbell to prove that acquittal was more likely than conviction. It required a reasonable probability of a different result—enough to undermine confidence in…