Detroit Legal News
June 24, 2003
page 62
Student participates in state Supreme Court case
By Patrick Novecosky
Joseph Corey is walking on air these days.
Not only did the second-year law student play a key role in a case recently before the Michigan Supreme Court, but his work on the case has also landed him a summer job.
It all started in January, when Corey responded to an e-mail from his Legal Writing professor at Ave Maria School of Law asking for a volunteer to work on a case with the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office. The prosecutor needed help preparing for a first-degree murder case, and Corey got the nod from his professors. It didn’t take long and Jackson County’s Chief Appellate Attorney Jerrold Schrotenboer put him to work.
“I responded right away,” Corey, a 36-year old Cincinnati native, said. “It seemed like quite an opportunity. I’m interested in criminal law, and I was ready to jump in with both feet.”
Schrotenboer asked Corey to do some research and put together a brief, which he planned to use in drafting his own brief for the high court. Schrotenboer was lead prosecutor in the appeal of Prentice D. Watkins who pleaded guilty to open murder in the 1998 shooting death of Alien R. Stewart. The judge called Watkins to testify at his hearing, where he was ultimately sentenced to life without parole.
Watkins appealed to the state Court of Appeals, which ruled that he should not have taken the stand. But, the court said, his taking the stand was a harmless trial error and not cause to overturn his conviction. That set the stage for Watkins appeal to the state Supreme Court.
“This was a case of first impression,” Corey explained. “A lot of it was counter-intuitive because one of the main issues was whether it is proper for a judge to call the defendant to the stand at a degree hearing.”
Michigan is one of three states that allow a defendant to plead guilty to open murder without specifying a degree, Corey said. A degree is determined later at a hearing.
“The case I found on point said that if you’ve got rights and counsel is there and you think those rights are being trodden on, you use them or you lose them,” he explained. “You either assert the privileges or say I don’t want to answer questions at this time.”
Schrotenboer decided to use Corey’s analysis in his brief to the Supreme Court and it paid off. When the high court heard oral arguments in April, Corey was front-and-center, sitting with Schrotenboer at the prosecutor’s bench. And when the high court handed down its decision at the end of May, it based its decision on
Corey’s analysis, Schrotenboer said.
“It’s a rather unusual opinion,” Schrotenboer explained. “Statistically, the state Supreme Court will reverse two-thirds of the time once it grants leave to appeal. What it did here, and it hardly ever does this once it grants leave to appeal, is it granted a per curiam opinion. It was unanimous.”
Schrotenboer has argued more than a dozen cases in front of the Michigan Supreme Court and is the only practicing attorney in Jackson County who has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court.
He lauded Corey’s input on the case.
“He went into it quite enthusiastically,” he said. “I wanted him to do legal research, and I wanted him to do some thinking about things. He went in with the typical law student’s fervor -tremendously enthusiastic, highly motivated, just not particularly well disciplined. It turned out that was exactly what I needed. He came up with an analysis that was non-intuitive, but he had the cases to back it up, and it really worked. I’ve been a lawyer for 21 and a half years, and I had never though of that analysis.”
Schrotenboer originally thought he would pursue the case on the basis of the nature of the hearing - that the judge in the degree hearing had the right to call the defendant to the stand because it was a degree hearing. But Corey had a different take on it, he said.
“Joe came up with a different analysis. He said the Fifth Amendment is not violated unless you’re forced to testify over your objection, over your invoking it.”
The prosecutor ran Corey’s analysis past his colleagues and they concurred. “Maybe one or two of them had heard of the analysis,” Schrotenboer said. “Others hadn’t. It’s counterintuitive, but it kind of makes sense. So we use the analysis. 1 used four alternative analyses, but to a large extent, that’s the one (the Supreme Court) grabbed onto.”
These days Corey isn’t basking in the glory of keeping a convicted murderer behind bars for his full life term. He is doing more research for Schrotenboer. And as he nears graduation one year from now, Corey is thinking more and more about a career in criminal law. He has Schrotenboer s support.
Corey will be working for him “as long as he wants to.” he said.
Patrick Novecosky is with Ave Maria School of Law.