Michigan Supreme Court Blog

Yesterday, the Michigan Court of Appeals decided an interesting 4th Amendment issue relating to a popular tactic utilized by police departments across the State of Michigan, "knock and talk." In the consolidated cases of People v Frederick and People v Van Doorne , Kent County Circuit Judge Dennis Leiber had denied each defendant's motion to suppress. Each filed applications for leave to appeal to the Court of Appeals that were denied. The Supreme Court, however, remanded the cases as on leave granted to consider whether the "knock and talk" procedure used by the Kent Area Narcotics Enforcement Team  (KANET) violated the 4th Amendment pursuant to the United States Supreme Court's holding in Florida v Jardines ,  ___ US ___; 133 S Ct 1409; 185 L Ed 2d 495 (2013) . In Jardines , Justice Scalia wrote the opinion for the majority, concluding that police officers who approach a house and enter onto the front porch with a drug detection canine, do so in vi...

Yesterday, the Michigan Court of Appeals rendered its published opinion in People v Gilbert Lee Poole, Jr. , Docket No. 315982 , holding that Poole was entitled to DNA testing of blood samples preserved from the scene of a 1988 homicide.  The interesting aspect of the case is the fact that, in Poole's 1989 trial in Oakland County, blood typing of blood found at different areas of the scene had already excluded Poole as the source of the blood, and the jury was informed of that fact. Yet the jury still found him guilty of the murder.  Poole has a fairly rare blood type of AB, which represents only about 3% of the population.  The victim's blood type (O) was found in many areas of the crime scene, and the investigators found no type AB blood.  However, one blood sample, found on a rock in the victim's pants, was type B, matching neither Poole nor the victim. Poole had petitioned the trial court on two separate occasions for DNA testing of the blood samples, and eac...