Cephas v. State

Summary

The Supreme Court affirmed Cephas's convictions and seventy-nine-year sentence after independently reviewing the record under the no-merit appeal procedure. It held that the record supported the voluntariness of Cephas's Miranda waiver, the denial of his untimely suppression arguments, the probable-cause finding, the challenged jury instructions, the sufficiency of the evidence, and the absence of prosecutorial or judicial misconduct. The Court also concluded that ineffective-assistance claims could not be considered on direct appeal.