It was in Sidney Brown’s house where officers found cocaine, a Beretta pistol, and $4,700 in cash. An anonymous informant notified the police of seeing cocaine at Brown’s house and a search warrant was subsequently issued. Brown was convicted of drug related crimes. He appealed.

Sixth circuit criminal law attorneys should be aware of a recent court of appeals opinion clarifying what is sufficient informant information to create probable cause for a search warrant application. Evidently, a simple anonymous tip will do.

We all make typos. Most of the time, it's no big deal. While a typo in an email between friends is harmless, a typo on a resume or a cover letter can be devastating. It's all about the context.

So what happens when a typo causes you to miss an important filing deadline? Can a technical error in an electronic filing jeopardize your client's right to appeal? The answer is "no," according to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. In a question of first impression, the appellate court determined this week that clients shouldn't be punished for an electronic filing error on the part of their attorneys.

Three minutes cost Gary Johnson, the 2012 Libertarian Party candidate for President of the United States, his spot on the ballot in the State of Michigan. Three minutes.

Johnson originally ran in the Republican primary. At the last minute, he requested to be removed from the ballot in that primary in order to allow him to run as a Libertarian. Elections officials notified him that he was three minutes too late.

Why not just run on both? Michigan has a "sore loser" law. This prevents a candidate, who loses the primary for one party, from running again as the candidate for another party. The purpose of this is to keep intraparty disputes out of the general election, to minimize voter confusion, and to prevent parties from splitting into factions.

Tamara Greene was the exotic dancer that wasn't assaulted by the former Mayor of Detroit's wife at the infamous party that never happened at the Manoogian Mansion in fall 2002. Months after the party that never was, Greene was shot dead in a drive-by.

Seems like a simple correlation, right? It's more likely that Carlita Kilpatrick's alleged (non) assault of an adult entertainer months before her death was sheer coincidence. Except, for some reason, it seems that every attempt to investigate the murder, and the possible connection to Mayor Kilpatrick's cronies, was quickly quashed and the investigators replaced.

"Shake and Bake," also known as the "One Pot Method," is a procedure for manufacturing methamphetamine. This new meth-making method combines all of the ingredients into a single bottle (such as a Gatorade bottle). The meth maker shakes the bottle, burps out the excess pressure, and hopes that it doesn't explode into a ball of flames.

An informant in Calhoun County witnessed an associate of Lonnie Hodge, Ms. Freeze, using this method. The same informant also told the police officers that Hodge showed him a pipe bomb and a black rifle that the defendant allegedly referred to as an AK-47.

What would you do if a naked, mentally-unstable man ran towards you, asked to be arrested, and then skipped away like a looney? Hiding in your car, locking the door, and calling the police is pretty good idea. For the police, however, their options are far more limited.

Whatever their options may have been for dealing with the unarmed LSD-influenced naked man, their chosen route, which included tackling, choke-holds, "hammer punches," and multiple men holding him down until he died of asphyxiation was probably not the correct route to take.

Jeannette Martello, M.D., J.D. is a very intelligent woman. After all, she possessed both an M.D. and a J.D. (from Boalt Hall, no less). Nonetheless, she was unable to clear the hurdle that was the bar exam, despite four tries in Kentucky and New York. She did, however, pass the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam before moving on to practice as a medical malpractice consultant.

As a consultant, she worked with Joshua Santana, Esq. on medical malpractice cases. After she referred a patient from her medical practice to Santana, the two came to an agreement, reduced to writing, that paid her a contingent percentage of the fee if the case was settled favorably.

From the court's description of Kevin Daws, you'd think he was Omar from "The Wire." On a cold winter evening in rural Henderson County, Tennessee, Daws broke into an acquaintance's house by jamming a shotgun barrel through the window, then robbed that person at gunpoint. He then went to another acquaintance's house and tried to stash his shotgun there. Both acquaintances were greeted with death threats if they contacted the police.

Of course, both did contact the police. One of the responding officers had been a prison guard while Daws served time for robbing a gas station attendant at gunpoint. Both officers were aware of an incident in which Daws was reported to have discharged a firearm in his front yard. He also had other unspecified weapons violations.

Like we said, Omar.

You know you botched an arbitration when, after five years of proceedings, the Sixth Circuit refers to your work as “a model of how not to conduct one.” Or you could read the court’s opinion, which is a 10-page retelling of every imaginable way in which one could fail at presiding over a neutral, fair arbitration process.

The questionable conduct in Kinkade v. White began with the attorneys. The Whites’ first attorney was caught transmitting a live feed of the transcripts to a hotel room, where a disgruntled former Kinkade employee was responding with cross-examination questions. The replacement attorney was also replaced after he was convicted of federal tax fraud.

In Goss v. Lopez, the Supreme Court held that the Due Process Clause applies to suspension or expulsion from school where a state has conferred a property interest in a public education. Before you kick a kid out of his local public school, he should get notice and a chance to present his side of the story.

But what if the school from which the student is removed isn’t his local public school?