A recent Idaho Court of Appeals decision follows recent United States Supreme Court precedent, allowing a search of a car incident to arrest, even if the defendant is in custody at the time of the search, and unable to reach into the vehicle at the time of the search. The Idaho case is State v. Cantrell, decided by Judge
March 2010
While Laura Silsby Sits In Jail – Children Are Sold As Slaves In Haiti
Laura Silsby is still sitting in a Haitian jail while a judge decides whether to order a trial on charges that she tried to take children from Haiti to the Dominican Republic who she believed were either orphaned or abandoned. The new charge is "arranging irregular travel." You will recall that she and other Idaho missionaries were in Haiti, ostensibly…
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Idaho’s Civil Action For Victims Of Sexual Abuse Not Applied Retroactively
The Idaho Supreme Court decided an interesting case in which the Boy Scouts of America sought to dismiss a case brought by sex abuse victims who had not proceeded with their cases until they were adults. Generally, Idaho civil law contains a statute of limitations that ends liability for civil cases after some number of years. For example – if…
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No Retroactivity For Six Sentenced To Death In Idaho
Six inmates sentenced to death for various murders will not receive new trials or new sentencing hearings, according to a decision of the Idaho Supreme Court. The US Supreme Court ruled in Ring v. Arizona, that the Sixth Amendment‟s jury trial guarantee requires that a jury find an aggravating circumstance necessary to impose the death penalty instead of a…
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Did I say the Idaho Supreme Court never grants relief? Say it ain’t so!
The problem with over generalizations is – they are in fact over generalizations! Guilty. I may have suggested recently that your likelihood of getting relief on appeal is about the same as coming up with a perpetual motion machine; or a little less than winning that $200 million Power Ball; or swimming from Los Angeles to San Diego – even…
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There’s A Message For Lawyers in REWORK
I am a huge fan of 37 Signals and their product line of mind-freeing, software-killing, reality-driven SOLUTIONS. There, I said it – SOLUTIONS. As lawyers, we tend to only see problems. Problems are meant to be solved, not lawyered, and sometimes we simply forget the value in achieving something. Recently I had a case in which my client was charged…
“I Was Hoping To Avoid All Those Hearings….”
I had a really nice woman in my office today who wanted to hire me to be her lawyer in a felony case. Her biggest block was, well – money. She said she had been "hoping to avoid all those hearings" and thereby make it possible to hire me. Fewer hearings means less time spent on the case and less…
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Back From The Bone – And Headed To Trial


Bone fishing is tougher than you might expect. The fish are fast and skittish – and it turns out that my miserable ability to cast a fly across a twenty foot Idaho creek does not account for anything when the body of water is the ocean.
"Can you cast it 30 yards?"
"Of course."
Not.
Having relied upon the…