In some jury trials, defendants are shackled—but not loudly. The chains are wrapped in duct tape, so jurors won’t hear the sound of restraint. This week’s separate statements by Justices Thomas and Welch in People v Borton, ___ Mich ___ (2025) (Docket No. 168596) sent me down an unexpected rabbit hole of curiosity. The case…
The feds didn’t recognize his tribe. The court said that’s not the point. Walter Caswell was spear fishing in a Mackinac County stream in October 2018 when a conservation officer handed him a citation. Fishing out of season. Illegal method. Two violations. Caswell had a state fishing license. It didn’t cover spear fishing. He also…
In a one-page order this week, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals and the Wayne County Circuit Court for failing to suppress a search warrant that violated the Fourth Amendment because (1) the search-warrant affidavit failed to connect the firearms and firearm-related items listed in the search warrant with the suspected criminal…
In a docket that feels both tightly focused and wide-ranging, the Michigan Supreme Court will hear argument in 56 cases based on its orders issued through September 26, 2025. (More, of course, will be later added in the coming months to fill out the court’s 2025-26 term.) The big picture (by the numbers) Premises liability:…
Handwritten court forms, exhibits, or correspondence can be hard to read. Either the penmanship is unclear (which can lead to interpretation and case-handling errors) or the recipient can’t read cursive. Signature moves: are we losing the ability to write by hand? Lucky for us, many AI tools can now look at a handwritten page and…
In a docket that feels both tightly focused and wide-ranging, the Michigan Supreme Court will hear argument in 50 cases based on its orders issued through September 19, 2025. (More, of course, will be later added in the coming months to fill out the court’s 2025-26 term.) The big picture (by the numbers) Consumer protection,…
The Michigan Court of Appeals recently offered a case study in judicial triage: with a short “focus order” issued less than two weeks before argument, the panel redirected People v Plomb from two garden-variety issues to a third—judicial interference—that would dominate both the oral argument and the published opinion. What a “focus order” is—and what…
This colorful image was included in the State Appellate Defender Office’s brief recently filed with the Michigan Supreme Court in People v Soriano (Docket No. 167373). Disclaimer: I don’t know whether SADO used any AI tools as a resource when deciding how to caption this image in its brief. Even so, the image and SADO’s…
Imagine finishing up an important brief on a late Friday night—so late that it’s now Saturday morning (12:08 a.m.). Mental exhaustion has set in. No way that brief is getting one more “fresh read” before filing. The legal writer’s brain might be fried. But ChatGPT isn’t. ChatGPT 5 in “thinking” mode, to be more specific….
The Michigan Supreme Court will hear argument on October 9 to revisit whether the 2001 Carpenter court correctly determined that the Michigan Legislature abolished the diminished capacity (failure of proof) defense for specific-intent crimes when MCL 768.21a was adopted in 1975. People v Carpenter, 464 Mich 223, 241 (2001). Two defense options before Carpenter For…