[This article by Matthew A. McGuire and Spencer S. Cady was originally published in the August 2022 issue of The Iowa Lawyer magazine. The 2021-2022 term statistics were compiled by Chris Slack.]
The 2021-2022 term of the Iowa Supreme Court concluded o …
Stanley Liggins was convicted of first-degree murder from events which occurred in 1990. Liggins was charged with the murder of a nine-year-old child. Liggins’s initial conviction was overturned on appeal in 1994 due to the admission of irrelevant, prejudicial evidence at trial. Liggins was ag
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On July 1 the State of Iowa filed a petition urging the Iowa Supreme Court to rehear its June 17 ruling on abortion in Planned Parenthood of the Heartland v. Reynolds. (Read our previous post on the Court’s prior ruling read more
The Iowa Supreme Court in a 4-3 ruling handed down June 30 overturned a 2004 decision that created a path for challenging Iowa’s law protecting animal confinement operators from nuisance suits as a violation of the inalienable rights clause of the Iowa Constitution.
In that 2004 ruling, read more
Under the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution, a defendant has the right to effective assistance of counsel. This right includes an entitlement to reasonably necessary ancillary services paid at state expenses, including where the defendant is represented by court-appointed counsel. Iowa Code Section 815.1 – …
The Iowa Supreme Court entered opinions in eleven cases in November 2024. In addition to the four cases covered in individual stories on the blog, the remaining opinions from November are summarized below.
The Iowa Supreme Court will hear arguments in 10 cases Dec. 17 and 18, and three other cases will be submitted to the Court without oral argument. Following are brief summaries of the December cases.
The Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure was not violated when a drug detection dog inserted its nose into the open window of a suspect’s vehicle, the Iowa Supreme Court held in a divided Dec. 6 decision.
Owners of farmland in Story County seeking to block the Iowa Department of Transportation’s condemnation of part of their property for a highway project succeeded in getting their appeal before the Iowa Supreme Court even after missing one filing deadline, but they lost their bid to revive their case in district court because they missed a second and critical deadline.
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.
