The Attorneys at Dixon & Moseley, P.C.
Strong, Trial-Ready Advocates Protecting Your Rights
We have all heard on television or from an unsatisfied litigant they will take their case to the Supreme Court. In reality, most cases have a right to be appealed to the Indiana Court of Appeals (COA). The Indiana Supreme Court (ISC) must accept most cases by a litigant timely filing a Petition to Transfer after the COA decides the…
In general, an individual cannot appeal a trial court’s decision until there is a final judgment in the case. A final judgment is one that disposes of all pending issues in a case. There are, however, exceptions to the “final judgment rule.” As one may imagine, a judge typically does not decide all issues in a case at one time.…
Indiana is fortunate to have an intermediate appellate court where every litigant with a final order can appeal as a matter of right if they have a good-faith basis the trial court erred.1 A significant amount of the entire civil docket is family law, so there are thousands of family law final orders issued each year. If you do not…
The trial court’s final order, such as in a divorce case, dividing the property and making a custody award can be enforced immediately. And it usually is. That said, a litigant who does not want an order enforced pending an appeal has two ways to stop its enforcement pending an appeal. In this blog, we cover stays that stop a…
The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution protects individuals from illegal searches and seizures. This means that when police officers illegally conduct searches or illegally seize items, evidence obtained as a result of the illegal search or seizure cannot be used against the individual to convict them. Most illegal searches occur in the absence of a search warrant, but,…
The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution protects individuals from random police searches. The United States Supreme Court has found that, implicit within the Fourth Amendment is a preference for a valid warrant before conducting a search. Specifically, the Supreme Court has stated that “searches conducted outside the judicial process . . . are per se unreasonable under the…
The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution protects you from illegal searches and seizures. This means that when police officers illegally conduct searches and illegally seize items, evidence obtained as a result of the illegal search and/or seizure cannot be used against the individual to convict them. The starting point in determining whether the search or seizure was illegal…
The Indiana Court of Appeals made it abundantly clear that if you want to interfere with a criminal proceeding by refusing to testify and do so with a grant of immunity, you will go to jail. A key new case on this rule is the topic of this blog post. In Michael Leroy Tunis v. State of Indiana, 2019 Ind.…
Most of us have heard the term Miranda warning at some point in our lives, but what are Miranda warnings? When do they matter? In a nutshell, Miranda warnings come into play when an individual is taken into police custody. Police are to give an individual his or her Miranda warnings before interrogating the individual. Miranda warnings, such as the…
The vast majority of us have been pulled over at some point in our lives. Whether it be for speeding or a random traffic stop, being pulled over is often an unpleasant situation. For some of us, being pulled over led to further complications, such as police conducting a search of your vehicle. But can police just pull you over…