Come brush up on your sentencing skills with a CLE focused on what to do when the State tries to use an out-of-state conviction to increase your client’s offender score! This course will tackle the often-confusing “comparability” questions which come up when your client has prior convictions from another state and the State wants to count those convictions as “points” at sentencing.  Starting with an overview of comparability analysis, presenter Kathryn Russell Selk, a 30-year appellate defender, will review the differences between factual and legal comparability, then delve into common challenges such as how to handle an out-of-state prior based on a “plea.”  Participants will learn a step-by-step framework for handling questions of comparability, then apply that framework to several examples. By the end of the webinar, defense attorneys will have a strong grounding in “comparability” analysis, enabling them to advocate for better results for their clients and to challenge the State’s often completely unsupported “comparability” claims.  Attendees will also have expanded their ability to educate courts – and prosecutors – on “comparability.”

To register, please write to wda@defensenet.org with “analysis” in the subject line. 1.0 Law and Legal credit has been requested from the bar.