Michigan Criminal Lawyers Blog

In September of 2011, 45-year-old Rodney A. Slayton was found guilty of first-degree premeditated murder in the 1992 strangulation death of Lynette Gibson, a mother of five children who was 39 years old at the time of her death. It was 18 years after the murder, which had become a cold case, before Slayton was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. It took the jury just 40 minutes to reach a verdict.

Slayton never confessed to the crime, although his ex-wife and her uncle testified at trial that he confessed to killing the woman by strangling Gibson with a seat belt as she sat in the passenger seat in his mother’s car.

While he has maintained his innocence in the murder, Slayton appealed his conviction arguing that his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination was violated, and that his Sixth Amendment right and two Michigan Department of Corrections prison rules were also violated in connection with a recorded interview with Sandra Slayton, his wife at the time, his ex-wife’s testimony, police questioning, and the evidence in general.

Sandra Slayton had participated as an agent willingly with the Cold Case Homicide Unit of the Saginaw Police Department’s Violent Crime Task Force, which is now defunct. Slayton argued in his appeal that prison rules regarding recorded conversations and eavesdropping were violated; he also challenged the testimony of his wife at the time the murder took place, Rachelle Carpenter. Carpenter testified that Slayton told her that he had killed Gibson, and that she assumed he was telling the truth. Carpenter also mentioned that Slayton had been arrested in the past for domestic violence, although the judge in the case instructed the jury to disregard that statement. It was on this point that Slayton argued his attorney should have motioned for a mistrial.

Ultimately, appellate judges Karen M. Fort Hood, Peter D. O’Connell, and E. Thomas Fitzgerald disagreed with Slayton’s arguments and upheld his conviction.

Michigan post-conviction defense lawyers know that winning an appeal is no easy task, and that without an experienced and knowledgeable attorney who is skilled in this area of the law, the chances of winning are slim.

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40-year-old Tracy Russell was convicted in March of 2012 of aggravated stalking and larceny from a building in connection with allegedly stalking his former girlfriend and stealing her heirloom jewelry as she was recovering from cancer surgery. He was sentenced to two to five years in prison by Jackson County Circuit Judge Susan Beebe in April of last year.

Russell appealed his conviction and sentence to the Michigan Court of Appeals, arguing that the prosecution should not have been allowed by the trial court to present evidence that Russell had stalked a former girlfriend, an act that he was not charged with. Russell also raised other issues with the appeals court which were not described in a news article at Mlive.com.

Russell’s alleged victim, Kimberly VanSyckle, testified in court that Russell sent her at least 50 text messages and called her nearly 1,000 times between early August and early September of 2011. At the time VanSyckle was recovering from breast cancer surgery, and said that she got to the point where she couldn’t take the constant phone calls and texts anymore. VanSyckle testified that she and Russell had lived together the previous year, and that she suspected he had stolen heirloom jewelry she had stored in a dresser, jewelry that her deceased mother had given her.

On June 27 of this year, appellate judges rejected Russell’s contentions and affirmed his conviction and sentencing.

Michigan attorneys who practice in the area of criminal appeals know it is critical that individuals who feel they have been wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced obtain the services of a lawyer with much experience and success in criminal appeals. This is a highly complex process which cannot be handled successfully by an attorney with little or no experience with appellate matters.

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Last month, the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals determined that a jury should decide if two Sturgis police officers, Damon Knapp and Mark Stoneburner, used excessive force against a young man and his mother when entering their home following an alleged shoplifting incident without a warrant.

Charles Smith, 20, was a suspect in an alleged shoplifting incident at a Sturgis Walgreens; he was suspected of stealing a $14.99 phone charger, a misdemeanor theft. In 2010, the Walgreens store reported to police that a phone charger had been stolen. According to a news article at the Detroit News, someone found a package in the store with a portion of the charger cut off. When confronted by the store manager, Charles Smith walked home and did not remain at the store until police arrived.

Later when Knapp and Stoneburner arrived at Smith’s home, Stoneburner allegedly entered without a warrant, pulling the suspect onto a deck where it is alleged by Smith that officers slammed his head against a railing while handcuffing him. A 12-page opinion issued by the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals stated that “Shoplifting of this sort offers no reason by itself for banging a suspect’s head against a wall.” The panel also affirmed a ruling made by a district court judge that the officers involved are not immune to litigation.

Knapp and Stoneburner’s attorney maintained that the suspect was resisting arrest; the federal appeals court found that the decision as to whether the officers or Smith are giving a true account of the incident should be left up to a jury.

The opinion ultimately found that if Smith did not resist arrest, the officers may have used excessive force. Smith’s mother also claimed that she was injured while trying to intervene during the incident at the home.

As all seasoned Michigan criminal appeals attorneys know, police officers are not beyond making errors in judgment. Mistakes can be made at nearly any point in the course of an arrest, or even at trial.

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In March of 2006, Ronald Wenman was convicted of felony murder in a case involving Walgreens clerk Patti Jo Morris. Wenman allegedly slashed Morris’ throat while holding up the Walgreens pharmacy in August of 2005.

Wenman was sentenced to life in prison, and has had his appeals for relief denied by the Michigan Court of Appeals. Now, U.S. District Judge Sean F. Cox has denied Wenman’s relief motion.

Habeas corpus is the right of detained Americans to challenge their imprisonment. Wenman petitioned the federal court in Detroit for habeas corpus following his failed state appeals, claiming ineffective counsel, an “impermissibly suggestive” photo line-up, and that he is innocent of the crime. According to Wenman, a witness was shown a photo line-up in which he was the only individual wearing an orange jail uniform. A news article at Mlive.com states that Wenman is a parolee and career criminal.

Wenman also submitted a copy of a police report in his efforts to argue his claim that he is innocent of the murder. The police report indicated that investigators were told by a parolee that a prostitute and two other men committed the robberies which included Walgreens and a grocery store that was robbed hours prior to the murder of the clerk, another robbery Wenman was accused of. The federal judge’s ruling said that Wenman’s innocence is not demonstrated because of the fact police considered other suspects.

Wenman was incarcerated in the Lakeland Correctional Facility in Coldwater, where he remains.

Michigan criminal appeals attorneys are very familiar with a “2255 petition,” or petition for writ of habeas corpus. Essentially, this is a request on behalf of a prisoner (may also be a judge or individual held in detention) to be brought to court by prison officials in order to determine whether that individual may have been imprisoned unlawfully.

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