Wednesday, October 27, 2004

U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Hicks applies retroactively

In Kelson v. Com., the defendant argued that at the time of his arrest, his arrest was illegal, based on the Virginia appellate cases that held the trespass policy at Richmond public housing projects to violate the First Amendment. Unfortunately for the defendant, the U.S. Supreme Court subsequently ruled that the Virginia courts were wrong on the First Amendment, and the panel in Kelson explained that the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling controls the validity of the defendant's earlier arrest.

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