Attorney Steve Mays preparing brief for WI Supreme Court
Attorney Steve Mays is currently preparing a brief for submission and eventual Oral Argument in the Wisconsin Supreme Court. This will be the third time Attorney Mays will have appeared in the Wisconsin Supreme Court to argue a case on behalf of a client.
In this case, he will be arguing: (1) a criminal defendant’s constitutional due process right to notice of the offense charged in a case where the information charged the current offense, but the trial court permitted the State to argue, and the jury to consider, alleged acts occurring over the course of five (5) years to meet an element of the charged offense of Stalking; (2) an issue of statutory interpretation with regard to Wis. Stat. § 940.32(2m)(b) which the Court of Appeals found to be ambiguous and which has not been addressed in any prior decision. (3) the novel issue of the propriety of clarifying legislative intent by virtue of sources completely unrelated to the legislative history; (4) the issue of the extent to which the appellate courts may rely upon extraneous sources outside the legislative history to interpret an ambiguous statute, as well as the differing legal analyses required for a due process notice challenge to an information versus that required upon a challenge that the charging document does not allege an offense under the law; and (5) the test applied by the Court of Appeals to determine whether the information was sufficient for due process notice to a defendant and whether it is in conflict with controlling opinions of both the Wisconsin and United States Supreme Courts.
