Post-conviction court erred in finding that defendant received effective assistance of trial counsel; there was no serious dispute that counsel (now deceased) had failed prior to trial to communicate a guilty-plea offer that would have reduced defendant’s sentence exposure to about half of what he actually received.
Criminal
D.A. v. State, No. 48A02-1504-MI-215, ___ N.E.3d ___ (Ind. Ct. App. Dec. 31, 2015).
Trial court, having expunged defendant’s convictions, should also have granted defendant’s request to expunge the records of a civil forfeiture proceeding that arose from the same facts underlying the convictions; expungement statute was ambiguous on that point, but as a remedial statute must be liberally construed.
State v. J.S., No. 16A04-1503-MI-89, __ N.E.3d __ (Ind. Ct. App., Dec. 28, 2015).
Trial court could not prevent the Bureau of Motor Vehicles from disclosing expunged OWI conviction to Commercial Driver’s License Information System. (At issue is the expungement law effective July 1, 2013, which has since been amended.)
Blackmon v. State, No. 48A02-1505-CR-270, ___ N.E.3d ___ (Ind. Ct. App. Dec. 15, 2015).
Trial court did not err in denying Batson challenge, even though one of the State’s two race-neutral reasons for striking prospective juror was suspect and trial court did not specify which reason it found credible; under the “dual-motive” approach, the record showed the State would have exercised the strike even without the suspect reason.
Key v. State, No. 02A04-1507-MI-854, ___ N.E.3d ___ (Ind. Ct. App. Dec. 17, 2015).
Trial court erred in denying expungement without a hearing after the State objected to the petition; expungement statute requires a hearing when the State objects, and expungement could not be summarily denied because defendant was entitled to mandatory expungement of one of his convictions.