counterclockwise

I went and argued my first appellate case this week before the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals in Jackson.

Funny building, isn’t it? Kind of reverse federal style. That’s oddly appropriate - most of my conversation with the justices seemed to revolve around how far off from standard federal procedure this case had gone.  Our client is in a rare sort of bind - she was arrested in Jackson, Tennessee, in 2001 and put on probation.  Then she was arrested again in Missouri in 2004, and sentenced on federal crimes.  The Tennessee justice system made a half-hearted stab at revoking her probation, but then never went anywhere with it.

Five years later, when she tried to get her paperwork ready for federal rehab, her Tennessee trial judge up and decided to yank her probation after all.  This is not a speedy trial by any stretch of the imagination, and the Constitution makes kind of a big deal about these things.  Whether it’s a big enough mistake to get her conviction thrown out is another thing all together.

I certainly argued that it does. Now we wait and see if I convinced at least two out of three appellate justices that we’ve got the law on our side.