Ohio

Update

The Supreme Court came down with three fairly significant decisions today:  in Kennedy v. Louisiana, they struck down the Louisiana statute making child rape subject to the death penalty.  In Giles v. California, they held that a defendant doesn’t forfeit his right to confrontation under Crawford by wrongdoing against the witness (in this case, the wrongdoing was fairly severe:  he killed her) unless his acts were intended to keep the witness from testifying.  And in Exxon v. Baker, the Supreme Court held that Exxon couldn’t be held liable for more than $500 million in punitive damages, the amount compensatory damages that had previously been awarded in the case. 

I’ll have a post on Kennedy tomorrow, and ones on Exxon and Giles next week.  Tomorrow will see the release of the opinion in the big gun rights case, so I’ll have an update when that comes out, and a discussion of that opinion in the next week or so as well.

Full post as published by The Briefcase on June 25, 2008 (boomark / email).