Hawkins v. Mississippi

Julian Hawkins was acting "erratically and unusually," and transferred from the Forrest General Hospital Emergency Room to Pine Grove Behavioral Health Center. At Pine Grove, Hawkins attacked a nurse and struggled against those who were trying to hold him down. He was charged with two counts of simple assault on “medical personnel.” The jury convicted him on one of those charges, and acquitted him on the second. Hawkins appealed, focusing his argument around alleged ineffective assistance of trial counsel. Because this issue could not be determined from only the facts contained in the record before it, the Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed Hawkins’s conviction, but allowed him the opportunity, if he chose, to raise the issue in a petition for post-conviction relief. However, because Hawkins was not properly indicted for the crime for which he was sentenced, the Supreme Court vacated his sentence and remanded for resentencing under the proper statute. View "Hawkins v. Mississippi" on Justia Law