MinnLawyer Blog

Robert Sheran, a former Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, died earlier this week at 96.

He was appointed to the court in 1971 by Gov. Wendell Anderson and served until 1981. He also served an earlier term as an associate justice on the court and was an FBI special agent in the 1940s.

His daughter Kathy Sheran is a DFL state senator from Mankato.

Attaching a GPS to a car for the purposes of gathering evidence is a search and is prohibited by the Fourth Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.   The justices were unanimous in their opinion in U.S. v. Jones, but divided on the rationale.  While the majority based its holding on search and seizure law, Justice Samuel Alito’s concurrence said the court should rely on whether the respondent’s reasonable expectations of privacy were violated.  Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined the majority opinion, authored by Justice Antonin Scalia, but also wrote a separate concurrence to suggest that the court may need to revisit privacy issues. Also joining in the majority were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy.

The 2012 legislative session starts Tuesday and two of the first bills that will be debated in the House of Representatives have already raised a few eyebrows.

Rep. Tony Cornish

Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Good Thunder, introduced a bill that will enhance penalties for assaulting or causing the death of a prosecuting attorney and a bill that will authorize county attorneys to carry firearms on duty. Both will be discussed in a house floor session Thursday afternoon.

In December, a Cook County prosecutor and a potential witness in a sexual assault trial were shot and wounded by Daniel Schlienz, the man on trial. The men survived and Schlienz later died in custody.

Cornish said he had been working on the bill to allow prosecutors to carry firearms before the December shooting, but the incident brought attention to the measure. There are already enhanced penalties for assaulting police officers and corrections officers. Cornish’s second bill adds prosecuting attorneys to that list.

The Minnesota County Attorneys Association has so far remained neutral on both bills, but some individual prosecutors have endorsed the changes.

Any lawyers out there who are still afraid of electronic document systems, take note: The Judicial Council is moving the court toward a paperless system.  The  eCourtMN strategic initiative is a multi-year transition to an electronic environment that, among other innovations, includes digital imaging of past case files and electronic filing (e-filing) of new cases.

The first phase of the initiative calls for 10 courts to be selected as pilot sites. Over the past year the Second Judicial District Court (Ramsey County) and the Fourth Judicial District Court (Hennepin County) have been operating a pilot project that allows for the voluntary e-filing of civil cases, and Dakota County District Court has been operating a pilot project to convert paper case files to digital images.

The scope of the initiative includes the following components:

•eFiling (including eCitations and eCharging)

•Electronic document management, including document imaging

•SessionWorks for judges (a touch screen desktop tool for judges to view case records)

•Electronic transmission of cases to the appellate courts

•eTools (eSignature, eNoticing, eCertification, and other tools that allow for electronic processing of orders)

The project will be overseen by Court Administrator Sue Dosal. “The eCourtMN initiative will be the most comprehensive reengineering effort yet undertaken by the Minnesota Judicial Branch,” she said.

.“Our past successes like the creation of the Minnesota Case Information System (MNCIS) and the Minnesota Court Payment Center (CPC) demonstrate that we are up to this new task,” Dosal said.  The Council directed Dosal to return in six months with a progress report.

William Mitchell College of Law Professor Peter Erlinder sounded upbeat on my voice mail a few minutes ago, refusing to comment on his abrupt leave of absence from the college, first reported in the Star Tribune here.  “This is all nonconsensual.  I’m sure it will all be worked out by the Board of Trustees.  In the meanwhile, I’ll continue my work,” is all Erlinder had to say.

Nobles County Attorney Gordon Moore and Assistant State Public Defender Terry Vajgrt have been appointed to the bench in the Fifth Judicial District.

Moore will replace Judge Jeffrey L. Flynn who will retire later this month, and Vajgrt will replace Judge Timothy K. Connell, who retired in October. Moore’s seat will be chambered in Nobles County and Vajgrt’s seat will be co-chambered in Pipestone and Rock Counties.

Minnesota’s Fifth Judicial District consists of Blue Earth, Brown, Cottonwood, Faribault, Jackson, Lincoln, Lyon, Martin, Murray, Nicollet, Nobles, Pipestone, Redwood, Rock and Watonwan counties.

Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Judge Richard Osburn, Assistant Morrison County Attorney Todd Kosovich and civil legal aid attorney Sarah Hennesy have been named as finalists for a judgeship in the Seventh Judicial District by the Commission on Judicial Selection.

The vacancy is for the seat created by Judge Steven Ruble’s retirement.

Hennesy is currently a civil legal aid attorney with St. Cloud Area Legal Services where she practices in family, government assistance and Social Security law.

Kosovich prosecutes all felony cases for Morrison County.

Osburn hears all civil, criminal, juvenile, and child welfare petitions, complaints and motions for the Tribal Court.

The Seventh Judicial District consists of Becker, Benton, Clay, Douglas, Mille Lacs, Morrison, Otter Tail, Stearns, Todd and Wadena counties.

Police behaved reasonably when they arrested protestors during the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul and thus the officers, and the city, are entitled to qualified immunity against civil rights claims, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.    

The case derives from the arrest of approximately 160 people at a park at Shepherd Road and Ontario Street on the first day of the convention. All charges eventually were dismissed.

Thirty-two people filed suit under 42 U.S.C. sec. 1983 against six police officers and the cty of St. Paul, alleging violations of their rights under the First and Fourth Amendments. The parties stipulated to the dismissal of claims against one officer, and Judge Paul Magnuson granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment on the remaining claims. The 8th Circuit affirmed.
The appellate court said that warrantless arrests and the use of force were reasonable under the circumstances, and there was no evidence that the protestors were arrested in retaliation for exercising their First Amendment rights. It also said the Senior Commander Joseph Neuberger did not take any action sufficient to impose liability on the city.

The case is Bemini et al. v. City of St. Paul, et al.

Hennepin County recently decided to dump VISA, but you can still use your VISA card at the Hennepin County District Court for criminal, civil and family court filing fees.

Earlier this week, Hennepin County announced it would no longer accept VISA cards at the seven service centers throughout the county for things like passports, driver’s licenses, vehicle registrations and tabs, hunting and fishing tags, and other state and local permits.

A recent state mandate required a 2.45 percent credit card fee to be charged to the customer, but VISA’s policies don’t allow for extra fees to be tacked on at the point of sale. MasterCard and Discover, however, have no problem with the extra fees (or “convenience fee” in credit card-speak) and became the de-facto credit card of choice in Hennepin County.

Nancy Peters, a spokesperson for the Fourth Judicial District in Hennepin County, said the courts will not be affected by the county’s change because the courts are a state service, not a county one.

The court will accept VISA for all MNCIS payments (the court’s case management system), and to pay a citation through the court’s ViBES system, a convenience fee is charged for ViBES payments when they are made over the phone or through the website, Peters said. There is no extra fee for payments at the counters or for e-filing in civil court.

Now that that is cleared up, good luck to Hennepin County service center workers for the next few weeks. Of the 911,000 service center transactions in Hennepin County last year, a third were paid by credit card and 80 percent of those were VISA.

The Associated Press reports that Minnesota Court of Appeals Judge David Minge is retiring at the end of March.

Judge David Minge

Gov. Mark Dayton’s office made the announcement Wednesday of an upcoming vacancy for the court’s Second Congressional District seat. The announcement says Minge is retiring on March 31.

The 69-year-old Minge is a former four-term Democratic congressman from southwestern Minnesota. He lost a reelection bid in 2000 to Republican Mark Kennedy. Former Gov. Jesse Ventura appointed him to the state Court of Appeals in 2002.

The state’s Commission on Judicial Selection is now accepting applicants for the seat.