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Entries for April 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Mike Nichols has accepted an invitation to speak at the conference on reforming indigent defense in May 2009. “The conference will be in Lansing and it is another effort to continue to shed light on the terrible flaws in our state’s system of delivering legal services to indigent defendants” said Nichols. Nichols will serve on a panel to discuss a day in the life of an attorney who accepts court appointed cases and the challenges that the attorney faces.
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Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Mike Nichols will join the faculty for the 2009 trial college presented by the Criminal Defense Attorneys of Michigan. Nichols said: “It is an honor. It will be fun, it will be rewarding and it will be hard work.” The college takes place in August in Lansing. It is open to attorneys throughout the state. “The trial college allows all of us, faculty and attendees, to hone and tweak those skills that can make the difference between justice and wrongful convictions,” Nichols added. Nichols is currently undergoing training to serve as a faculty member.
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Tuesday, April 21, 2009
A judge ruled that a Nichols Law Firm client cannot be prosecuted for felony DUI/DWI based on an unlawful bodily alcohol content at trial. The judge granted the request of attorney Wendy Schiller-Nichols at the conclusion of the preliminary examination. “The prosecution could not proceed because she never put in any evidence of my client’s bodily alcohol content” said Ms. Schiller-Nichols. The case may go to trial within the next 60 days on a theory strictly of operating while under the influence. “That theory can be much more difficult to prove and based on the testimony we’ve got a shot.”
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Tuesday, April 21, 2009
A judge ruled that a police officer failed to perform standardized field sobriety tests properly and ruled that they could not be considered in determining whether the arrest of a Nichols Law Firm client was proper. “The judge granted our request to exclude the tests of horizontal gaze nystagmus, walk and turn and one leg stand, because they just were not administered properly” said Mike Nichols. Nichols added “the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration has produced research that concluded that the so-called standard field sobriety tests are reliable as an indicator of intoxication only when they are administered in a standardized manner.”
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Thursday, April 2, 2009
The Michigan Secretary of State has changed the law regarding license suspensions for failure to pay Driver Responsibility Fees.
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