You Have Graduated from Law School, Passed the Bar, and Opened

question 46

Multiple Choice

You have graduated from law school, passed the bar, and opened your own law firm. The first phone call to your office comes from a mother begging you to handle an appeal for her son, who has been sentenced to life in prison under a "three strikes and you're out law." This law mandates a life sentence for any three criminal convictions. Your state has no death penalty, so this is the worst sentence that he can receive. You agree to hear the case and the mother says she will be there in ten minutes to hand you the file. You decide to use the ten minutes before her arrival researching Supreme Court case law in "three strikes" cases; in the process you envision possibilities of what this client might have done.
-You first wonder if the client may have committed three non-violent crimes. Perhaps his final act was something as simple as writing a bad check for $100. If that were the case, then:

• A) You really have little chance of winning an appeal, based on Supreme Court precedent from Ewing v. California, where an individual received life in prison for a similar offense.
• B) You can build a strong appeal around Solem v. Helm, where the Supreme Court vacated a life sentence for similar activity.
• C) You have no relevant Supreme Court case law to turn to, and should tell the mother that there is nothing that can be done
• D) You could use the Supreme Court's ruling in Roper v. Simmons to set him free, as long as he is over the age of 18

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Definitions:

Interest Compounded

Interest compounded refers to the process where interest earned on an investment is reinvested to earn additional interest, leading to exponential growth in the investment's value.

Lump Sum

A one-time transaction occurring at a specific moment, rather than several installments spread out.

Years

A period of time consisting of 365 days (or 366 in a leap year), used as a standard unit of time to compare the duration of events or the intervals between them.