Future attorneys attending the Nashville School of Law will have an opportunity to hear oral arguments in a dozen Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals cases without leaving their Nashville campus.
The cases involve crimes ranging from a speeding ticket a citizen received for his high speed pursuit of a police car to a robbery and murder.
A three-member panel of the Court of Criminal Appeals, with Judge Jerry Smith presiding, will sit Jan. 24-25 in an appellate courtroom at the law school. Also on the panel are Judges Robert Wedemeyer and Thomas Woodall. The 12-member intermediate appellate court sits in panels of three in Nashville, Jackson and Memphis to hear post-conviction petitions and trial court appeals in felony and misdemeanor cases.
The speeding case, State v. John Kersey, began when the defendant saw a police officer driving at a high rate of speed without using a siren or emergency lights. The defendant, Kersey, said he drove behind the police car in an effort to identify and report the officer, who then ticketed him for driving 90 miles per hour. Kersey filed a complaint against the officer and sought a warrant against him for speeding, but was unsuccessful. Kersey has appealed his conviction for speeding.
In the murder case, State v. Danny Wayne Strode, the state is appealing a trial court ruling that the defendant cannot be sentenced to death because he has a low I.Q.
“Dean Joe C. Loser, Jr., who was a circuit court judge for two decades, invited us to conduct court at the law school,” Smith said. “We are looking forward to sitting in one of the school’s two new courtrooms and also to seeing some of the other state-of-the-art facilities on the campus.”
The night law school was started in 1911 by four Vanderbilt law graduates. Loser, a 1959 graduate, is the school’s fourth dean. The former YMCA Night Law School moved recently to its new 33,000-square-foot facility.