In this month's column, we address a criminal appeal in which the Court of Appeals set aside a conviction because of the trial court's failure to consider the defendant's youthful offender status and, in so doing, determined that one of its own precedents had been wrongly decided 36 years earlier. We also discuss a decision adding more clarity to constitutional limits on the use of GPS tracking devices. Finally, we deal with the recurring issue of whether tortious conduct of government agencies is proprietary, and therefore held to the general negligence standard of private parties, or part of a government function and immune from liability in the absence of a special relationship between the injured party and the government, giving rise to a special duty.
Precedent Overruled
In an unusual development, the court determined that one of its own decisions from 1977 had been wrongly decided when in People v. Rudolf it overturned a criminal conviction because of the trial court's failure to consider the defendant's youthful offender status.
