Michigan Supreme Court Blog

From today's Detroit Free Press: Police raid highlights problems many face BY BILL LAITNER FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER Michigan's medical marijuana law has patients fearing arrest while police say they're unsure of who can legally possess or supply the drug. In several instances, police have arrested patients, confiscated their marijuana, conducted searches that turned out to be improper and seized trailer-loads of cultivation gear because of gray areas in the state law that allows medical marijuana, Southfield attorney Michael Komorn said. The legal problems spawned by the law are so great that defense attorneys have begun specializing in medical marijuana cases, with one top 10 Michigan law firm devoting an area of practice to it.  "Police across the state are either confused or resisting compliance with the medical marijuana law," staff attorney Dan Korobkin of the American Civil Liberties Union said. Some medical users lack proper paperwork or have m...

An interesting post today on the SCOTUSBlog form David Stras: Ryan W. Scott (Indiana University Maurer School of Law) has posted an article on SSRN entitled “Inter-Judge Sentencing Disparity After Booker: A First Look,” see here . The piece is forthcoming in the Stanford Law Review. Professor Scott uses a unique dataset from the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts to examine how judges have handled their new sentencing freedom as a result of cases such as Booker, Kimbrough, and Gall. Using a natural experiment method, the study finds that the “judge effect” at sentencing has more than doubled since that trio of cases was decided by the Supreme Court. Though the article examines only the data from a single district, the empirical findings are consistent with anecdotal evidence around the nation regarding inter-judge sentencing disparities as a result of the Supreme Court’s recent sentencing jurisprudence. Of particular note, the study finds that some “busine...

Last week, the Michigan Court of Appeals published its opinion in the Attorney General's case against former Wayne County Circuit Judge Mary Waterstone, and in doing so, fired the entire Attorney General's Office and discharged them from any further responsibility for the prosecution. In the People v Mary Waterstone , presented to the Court by Paul Smith and Gerald Evelyn, the Attorney General had agreed to investigate and prosecute, if warranted, allegations that Judge Waterstone, Karen Plants and two Inkster police officers had either testified falsely or knowingly allowed perjured testimony to be presented to the jury in 2005 in the cases of the People v Alexander Aceval and Ricardo Pena.  After the Wayne County Prosecutor recused herself because of a conflict of interest, four other counties also refused the assignment. However, it turns out, the AG had a difficult conflict of interest himself.  Following his conviction, Aceval filed a Federal Sec. 1983 civil righ...