Articles

Court rules on literacy program, educational credit time

While applauding a prison inmate for pursuing higher education while behind bars, the Indiana Court of Appeals has determined
that man shouldn’t receive additional educational credit time for a program the state system doesn’t consider
to fit into its definition of “literacy and life skills” programs.

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Justices asked to revisit Indian family law

At least one Indiana Court of Appeals judge believes the state’s highest court should revisit how it applies a three-decade
old statute to tribal Indian family adoption issues inside Indiana.

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Articles about pending cases raise concerns

At least two attorneys are questioning how some legal publications have included articles, columns, or other types of coverage on pending cases, and they worry that these articles may influence the judges on the cases.

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5 appeals judges up for retention

A third of the Indiana Court of Appeals judges face voter retention this year, including two initially appointed within the past three years to fill vacancies on the state’s second highest court. With a month and a half before the filing deadline, one of the applicants says that all five appellate judges submitted their retention […]

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COA: Breathalyzer certificate is not testimonial

For the first time since the Supreme Court of the United States’ 2009 ruling that found a defendant had a Sixth Amendment
right to confront the analysts who prepared lab certificates certifying the defendant had cocaine, the Indiana Court of Appeals
ruled that a trial court did not violate the defendant’s right to confrontation by allowing the inspection certificate
for a breathalyzer into evidence, even though the certifier of the equipment did not testify at trial.

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Justices vacate transfer grant, reinstate COA ruling

The Indiana Supreme Court has decided to not consider a case that justices had granted transfer on late last year, reinstating
a lower appellate court’s ruling that a trial judge had abused her discretion in admitting a blood test in a drunken
driving case.

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Court rejects stale trash evidence argument

The Indiana Court of Appeals has rejected an argument that evidence found in a trash search was stale because no other garbage
had been collected in the past two weeks and that seized material could have been too old.

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Debate swirls around citations, use of the NFP

Envision a world in which lawyers successfully defended a client on what all parties thought was a significant legal issue,
but future attorneys couldn’t use that case result to help persuade judges in their litigation.

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Sexually violent predator petitions must be refiled

The status as a sexually violent predator for two inmates stands for now, but the Indiana Court of Appeals directed the men
to refile their motions to remove that status pursuant to the recently amended statute dealing with this issue.

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COA upholds 125-year child-molesting sentence

In upholding multiple child-molesting convictions and a 125-year sentence, the Indiana Court of Appeals has rejected a woman’s
argument about why her penalty should be reduced based in part on the very young ages of the victims.

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Court: Police shouldn’t have made traffic stop

An appellate decision today in a drunk-driving traffic stop case out of Fort Wayne illustrates how a lack of knowledge about
a particular road’s layout can derail the prosecution of someone who may have been intoxicated behind the wheel.

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COA affirms resisting police conviction

The Indiana Court of Appeals was hesitant to rely on an Indiana Supreme Court case’s definition of “forcibly
resist” because that language doesn’t appear to adequately describe the meaning of the phrase as it has been recently
applied.

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Mom may be liable for daughter’s accident

The Indiana Court of Appeals judges agreed that a mother may possibly be liable for her daughter’s accident in which
she struck a pedestrian with her car after drinking and talking on her cell phone at the time of the accident. The judges
didn’t completely agree as to why the mother may be liable.

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Opinion rules on 2 issues of first impression

The Indiana Court of Appeals was faced with two issues of first impression in one opinion – the meaning of Indiana Code
Section 27-9-3-34(d) and whether a party is entitled to a jury trial for disputes concerning claims in liquidation proceedings.

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