By: Carrie Bennice / Date: 15, September 2017
Mullendore v. City of Belding, Mich., et al., No. 16-2198 (BATCHELDER, Merritt, Clay). The City Manager of Belding filed suit against the City and City Council members under the Family and Medical Leave Act after the Council voted to terminate her employment while she was out of work following a surgery. The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants, and the City Manager appealed. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, holding that the fact that an adverse employment action occurred while… Read more
By: Carrie Bennice / Date: 15, September 2017
Flannery | Georgalis resigned as federal prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Ohio and were presented with plaques to recognize their distinguished years of federal service.
By: Carrie Bennice / Date: 14, September 2017
U.S. v. Cox, No. 16-2404 (KEITH, Batchelder, Sutton). The defendant was sentenced to 2,880 months in prison for child exploitation and child pornography offenses. He appealed, alleging—among other things—trial errors in violation of the Confrontation Clause of the U.S. Constitution and the Federal Rules of Evidence. The Sixth Circuit affirmed the convictions and sentence. The Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision to allow two of the victim-children to testify by closed-circuit television. Reviewing for clear error, the Court found… Read more
By: Carrie Bennice / Date: 13, September 2017
U.S. v. Coleman, No. 16-3972 (SUHRHEINRICH, Norris, Griffin). The defendant-appellant was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm and sentenced to 36 months in prison. He appealed his conviction, arguing that the district court should have ordered sua sponte a competency evaluation because throughout the trial and other proceedings the defendant espoused sovereign citizen and other fringe legal theories. For instance, he referred to himself as a “flesh and blood living being,” contested the district court’s jurisdiction… Read more
By: Carrie Bennice / Date: 12, September 2017
Beydoun, et al. v. Sessions, et al., Nos. 16-2168/2406 (CLAY, Griffin, Thapar). The plaintiffs-appellants are Michigan residents who were subjected to repeated secondary screenings before flying at airports across the U.S.. They believe that they are on the “Selectee List”—a subset of the Terrorist Screening Database—but their attempts to use Dept. of Homeland Security procedures to get their names removed were futile and the government did not confirm or deny whether they were on the list at all. The plaintiffs… Read more
By: Carrie Bennice / Date: 11, September 2017
Moody, et al. v. Mich. Gaming Control Bd., et al., Nos. 16-2244/2369 (MOORE, Cole, Batchelder). The Michigan Gaming Control Board suspended the licenses of four horse-racing drivers and excluded them from a racetrack after the drivers invoked their Fifth Amendment right and refused to answer questions during an investigation into an illegal race-fixing scheme. The drivers filed suit, alleging violations of their procedural due process and Fifth Amendment rights. At the summary-judgment stage, the district court denied qualified immunity on… Read more
By: Carrie Bennice / Date: 11, September 2017
Mays, et al. v. City of Flint, Mich., et al., No. 16-2484 (GILMAN, Suhrheinrich, McKeague). The plaintiffs—residents of Flint, Michigan—sued several city and state officials in Michigan state court for alleged state torts arising from the toxic condition of the Flint water supply. The defendants removed the case to federal court, arguing that they performed the conduct in question under the supervision and direction of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and contending that the plaintiffs’ claims implicate a substantial… Read more
By: Carrie Bennice / Date: 11, September 2017
In re Coley, Nos. 17-3071/3815 (Siler, Sutton) (Per Curiam) (Merritt, dissenting). The petitioner is on death row in Ohio, and filed a second habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, arguing that Hurst v. Florida, 136 S. Ct. 616 (2016), announced a new rule of constitutional law requiring juries to make specific findings about mitigating evidence during capital sentencing. He argued that in light of Hurst, Ohio’s capital-sentencing scheme is unconstitutional. The district court transferred the petition to the Sixth… Read more
By: Carrie Bennice / Date: 08, September 2017
Hand v. Houk, Case No. 14-3148 (BOGGS, Clay, Rogers). The defendant-appellant is on death row in Ohio after being convicted of two counts of aggravated murder stemming from a decades-long scheme to hire a friend to kill his wives in order to collect their insurance policies. The opinion sets out the detailed facts of the investigation and procedural history, which ultimately ended with the defendant losing on direct appeal and state post-conviction relief. In 2007, the defendant filed a writ… Read more
By: Carrie Bennice / Date: 07, September 2017
United States v. Lanier et al., Case Nos. 16-6655/6657 (MOORE, Stranch, Donald). The defendants-appellants were charged with federal fraud crimes. During jury deliberations, a juror contacted a state prosecutor who was a social acquaintance not involved with the federal prosecution to report a “problem” with the jury deliberations. The state prosecutor told the juror that they could not discuss the deliberations, and to report any problems to the district-court judge. No juror reported any problems to the court, but the… Read more