Friday, January 18, 2013

Opinions like this are worrisome

Here, the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal on finding a failure to preserve error, where the defendant at the trial argued that the search violated the Fourth Amendment, making some argument about whether the stolen property in his backyard was in "plain view," but the Court concluded his argument to the trial court did not match his argument to the appeals courts and he did not "cite any cases" in the trial court that dealt with the particular aspect of the "plain view" doctrine that he sought to raise in the appeals court.

Any time an appeal raising constitutional issues is dismissed because of what case law the trial counsel cited or did not cite, I have to wonder what's going on. In my opinion, it is not necessary to cite any cases to comply with Rule 5A:18.

No comments: