The Iowa Supreme Court has declined to add another criminal-sentencing exception for juvenile offenders in a pair of rulings regarding Iowa’s mandatory $150,000 restitution in murder cases.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a series of cases over the la …
It’s not often a lawyer can predict the outcome of a case based on an appellate court oral argument. But more than one Iowa Supreme Court justice readily acknowledged Tuesday that Des Moines attorney Gary Dickey exposed a constitutional problem with Iowa’s process for selecting jurie …
Lawyers arguing a case before the Iowa Supreme Court Tuesday presented sharply contrasting views of justice: One view is that denying an innocent defendant the right to appeal is a miscarriage of justice; the other view is that the interest of justice in finality is not served by opening the do …
The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says criminal defendants have the right to a jury made up of a cross-section of the community. Assembling a jury that precisely reflects a community’s racial makeup can be statistically challenging in a state with small percentages of racial minori …
Besides filling the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, President Donald Trump has at least 17 vacancies to fill on the federal appeals courts around the country.
That includes three vacancies on the U.S. Court …
The Iowa Supreme Court has clarified two previous rulings that reached seemingly contradictory positions on whether police investigative reports must be made public under the Iowa Open Records Act.
The clarification came in a ruling handed down April 5 in …
The Iowa Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in five cases on April 9, and nine other cases will be submitted to the court without oral argument. Three cases will be argued beginning at 9 a.m., and two will be argued beginning at 1:30 p.m.
Go to t …
Three years ago Rox Laird, a contributor to this blog, sat down with Iowa Supreme Justice Daryl Hecht for a rare on-the-record interview ahead o …
The Iowa Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Forest City April 2 in a case that raises for the first time a question about how Iowa law regulating approval of electric generating facilities applies to wind energy projects.
The argument, which is open …
On Brief: Iowa’s Appellate Blog is devoted to appellate litigation with a focus on the Iowa Supreme Court, the Iowa Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
