Criminal Law
Crime and Consequences 
Criminal law issues from the perspective of victims of crime and the law-abiding public.
Post Frequency: 1.8/day Last Entry: November 25, 2008 at 18:31:33 Recent Entries: 574
By Kent Scheidegger et al.
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Under Construction
Posted on November 25, 2008We plan to move the Crime and Consequences blog to a new host over the Thanksgiving holiday period. During the transition, there may be times when some users are seeing the old blog and some are seeing the new one....
Blog Scan
Posted on November 25, 2008Two New Cases Granted Today: For those of us who wanted something other than our Thanksgiving turkey to ponder over the holiday the U.S. Supreme Court has delivered. Today, the Court granted review in two new cases. One case involves...
People v. Brendlin Limits Suppression of Evidence
Posted on November 25, 2008As reported in today's News Scan, the California Supreme Court has handed down its decision in People v. Brendlin. Yesterday's decision adopted a rule "that discovery of an outstanding arrest warrant prior to a search incident to arrest constitutes an...
News Scan
Posted on November 25, 2008Court Allows Evidence from Unlawful Traffic Stop: The California Supreme Court has unanimously reinstated the drug conviction of a man found guilty based upon evidence uncovered after the car he was riding in was illegally stopped. The Court's decision in...
Silicon Valley Drunks
Posted on November 24, 2008An important aspect of "broken windows" policing is the enforcement of public order laws, such as the prohibition of public drunkenness. It appears that San Jose is about to take a step backward. Sean Webby has this story in the...
Ethics Poll: Lawyers at the Top of the Bottom
Posted on November 24, 2008Gallup's annual survey of the public's perception of the ethics of various professions is available here. The medical folks continue to top the chart, while financial professions have taken an unsurprising hit. Relevant to criminal law, the police do well...
News Scan
Posted on November 24, 2008CA Court Voids Execution Procedures: As posted by Kent Scheidegger, California's first district court of appeals ruled Friday, that the state's lethal injection procedures are invalid because the were not adopted through an administrative process which requires public comment and...
Angered, D.C. Police Call for E-Mails
Posted on November 22, 2008In today's WaPo, Theola Labbé-DeBose and Robert E. Pierre report on an unusual police strategy: D.C. police, frustrated that a teenage robbery suspect they have arrested kept getting released, took to cyberspace yesterday in an unusual effort to lobby judges...
Maryland DP Commission
Posted on November 21, 2008The dissent picked up two more votes on Maryland's death penalty study commission, reports Gadi Dechter in the Baltimore Sun. In an interview, [Attorney General Douglas] Gansler, a Democrat, said that he did not believe lawmakers would be greatly influenced...
California Lethal Injection Decision
Posted on November 21, 2008The California Court of Appeal, First District has held that the lethal injection protocol is a regulation subject to the Administrative Procedures Act. The decision in Morales v. Cal. Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation is here. If CDCR had simply...
News Scan
Posted on November 21, 2008Kentucky to Execute Chapman Tonight: Marco Allen Chapman, the confessed child killer who has sought execution since his conviction four years ago, is scheduled to be put to death tonight. A story by Courier-Journal writers Jason Riley and Deborah Yetter...
Blog Scan
Posted on November 21, 2008Five Detainees Ordered Released: As reported yesterday on SCOTUSblog, and today in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal , U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ordered the release of five Algerian Guantanamo detainees while ordering the continued...
Attorney General Mukasey
Posted on November 21, 2008Last night, I attended the annual dinner of the Federalist Society, where the guest speaker was Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Mr. Mukasey gave a strong speech defending the Bush Administration's success in defending the nation from further terror attacks...
News Scan
Posted on November 20, 2008No Death Penalty For Triple Murders: A story from the KX Net reports that a a convicted drug dealer, charged with murdering three women at a Florence hair salon in Montana, is not eligible for the death penalty. In an...
Abu-Jamal
Posted on November 19, 2008Pennsylvania has filed its certiorari petition seeking Supreme Court review of the Third Circuit decision overturning the death sentence of the notorious Mumia Abu-Jamal. The case is Beard v. Abu-Jamal, No. 08-652. Abu-Jamal's petition seeking review of the Third's decision...
Blog Scan
Posted on November 19, 2008Tomorrow is a Big Day for the Detainees: At Scotusblog, Lyle Denniston provides a "primer" detailing detainee cases that federal courts will hear tomorrow, and next week. He also comments on the significance of each of the cases. Beginning at...
News Scan
Posted on November 19, 2008East Bay Murderer Gets Death Penalty: Paul T. Rosynsky reported in the Mercury News that former Navy sailor Anthony McKnight smiled and openly laughed as he was sentenced to death for killing and raping five women in 1985 by an...
Eric Holder and the Death Penalty Data Dump
Posted on November 18, 2008Joe Palazzolo at BLT notes the conflicting stories regarding whether former Deputy AG Eric Holder has been tapped for the top spot. Newsweek says yes and the WaPo says "almost certainly." On the other hand, "An official in the Obama...
Blog Scan
Posted on November 18, 2008Some Rehnquist Papers Made Public: At Legalities, Jan Greenburg reported on yesterday's release of a few of former Chief Justice Rehnquist's papers. She also provides this link to Adam Liptak and Jonathan Glater's report of what researchers came across...
News Scan
Posted on November 18, 2008Ayers Talks Death Penalty: Anti-war activist William Ayers, and former member of the Weather Underground, emphasized his opposition to the death penalty in a speech at the Georgetown University Law Center last night reports Gregg Re from The Hoya. Recently,...
A Real Psychopath?
Posted on November 18, 2008Irrespective of the debates about culpability and psychopathy, the noted traits of the psychopath - the glibness, lack of remorse, irresponsibility - speak volumes about the type of folks given the psychopathic label. And while merely reading a court opinion...
Diagnostic Accretion in Shadow
Posted on November 17, 2008Christopher Lane at the L.A. Times has this op-ed on the development of the forthcoming 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. As noted before, it's a solid bet the diagnostic manual will grow with each...
Bell v. Kelly Drop-Kicked
Posted on November 17, 2008The U. S. Supreme Court this morning dumped the capital habeas case of Bell v. Kelly with a one-line order: "The writ of certiorari is dismissed as improvidently granted." Sometimes "improvidently granted" is a term of art, but this time...
Americans Hold Firm to Support for Death Penalty
Posted on November 17, 2008That is the title of this Gallup report by Lydia Saad. On the generic question (problematic for measuring absolute support but useful for gauging long-term trends), the result is 64-30, down a tad from last year but the same as...
Just Can't Help Themselves
Posted on November 17, 2008John Seabrook of the New Yorker has this in-depth article about Dr. Kent Kiehl at the University of New Mexico titled Suffering Souls. As the article details, Dr. Kiehl is the leading expert in the field of brain imaging and...
Blog Scan
Posted on November 17, 2008Without En Banc Three Judge Panel Will Decide Fate of Detainees: Over the weekend, Lyle Denniston posted on the D.C. Circuit Court's Friday refusal to to grant en banc review of the Uighurs' plea for initial review by the full...
News Scan
Posted on November 17, 2008Iowa Sex Offender Cohabitant Law Upheld: An AP story by Michael Crumb reports that the Iowa Supreme Court, in a split opinion, upheld a law that bars single parents from living with convicted sex offenders. The case involves a Coralville...
Today's Grants and Orders
Posted on November 14, 2008The U.S. Supreme Court granted review in five cases. The orders list can be found here. The Court granted certiorari in four cases, and agreed to hear an appeal from Citizens United in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (08-205)....
All right then, just this once
Posted on November 14, 2008From The Economist print edition (the title above is theirs, also): Mixed signals from Canberra over the Bali bombers THE death sentences against the three Bali bombers put Australia?88 of whose nationals died in the attacks?in a difficult spot. It...
News Scan
Posted on November 14, 2008Texas Executes 17th Murderer: A New York parolee was executed in Texas Thursday as reported by the Associate Press. Denard Manns, who had an extensive criminal record, was convicted and sentenced to die for the 1998 robbery, rape and murder...
AEDPA Fast Track Regs
Posted on November 13, 2008Marcia Coyle reports in NLJ that the Department of Justice plans to finalize, before the end of the current administration, the regulations for approving states for the long-delayed fast-track for capital habeas cases under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty...
News Scan
Posted on November 13, 2008Man Caught Texting 12-Year-Old Girl Gets 6 Years: A story from the AP reports that a man from Oregon has been sentenced to 6 years in prison for attempted rape after a mother discovered his inappropriate text messages on her...
Dead monsters hatch no plans
Posted on November 12, 2008Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun notes that many Australians cheered when the Bali bombers were finally executed. Why, then, is their government leading a drive to ban all executions worldwide? We may well argue that the death penalty shouldn't...
Nailed
Posted on November 12, 2008In the question presented in the petition for writ of certiorari in Bell v. Kelly, argued today in the U.S. Supreme Court, Richard Bress of Latham and Watkins referred to the claim in federal court as being "predicated on evidence...
News Scan
Posted on November 12, 2008First-Year Law Student Fights Intruder For His Laptop: A story from KTAR news reports that a student from Arizona State University, wrestled and fought with an intruder who demanded his laptop. Police said Gabriel Saucedo entered Alex Botsios' apartment through...
SCOTUS Today
Posted on November 12, 2008The U.S. Supreme Court issued its first opinion of the term in an argued case, Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., No. 07-1239, the "boink the whales" case. SCOTUSblog has a report here. On the argument calendar for today...
A Case of Overclaim Syndrome?
Posted on November 11, 2008Brain Overclaim Syndrome is pernicious in contemporary legal and behavioral science scholarship. Evidence of its infectious reach now appears in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science in the article From Genes to Brain to Antisocial Behavior (subscription required) by...
Vocabulary Lesson
Posted on November 10, 2008When citing a statute in oral argument, how do you pronounce the lower case Roman numeral paragraph numbers? In United States v. Hayes today, ASG Nicole Saharsky called paragraphs (i) and (ii) "Romanette one and two." This was new to...
Status Quo at the Supreme Court?
Posted on November 10, 2008Tony Mauro in the Legal Times: As the theory goes, all three justices [Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg] would be happier being replaced under Democrat Obama than they would have been under Republicans John McCain or, for the last eight years, President...
News Scan
Posted on November 10, 2008Victim Impact Evidence Appeal Denied: An AP story reports that the Supreme Court turned down appeals from death row inmates seeking to limit videos and similar material prepared by murder victims' families for juries. The appeal comes from two California...
Today's Orders
Posted on November 10, 2008Last Friday, the Supreme Court held a conference and granted certiorari in one civil case. The usual pattern is that when the Court announces a grant on conference day the orders list issued the following Monday has no grants. Sure...
Blog Scan
Posted on November 07, 2008New Detainee Filing from Justice Department: Lyle Denniston reports on SCOTUSblog that the Justice Department has made its final filing before the D.C. Circuit Court in its case to keep 17 Chinese Muslim Uighurs from entering the United States. Previous...
Oregon Initiatives
Posted on November 07, 2008Oregon votes approved by a 61-39 vote Ballot Measure No. 57: "Increases sentences for drug trafficking, theft against elderly and specified repeat property and identity theft crimes; requires addiction treatment for certain offenders." Final tally here...
News Scan
Posted on November 06, 2008Aussie Rethinks Opposition to Death Penalty: David Barnett, an Australian writer and lifetime opponent of capital punishment, has this piece in the Canberra Times suggesting that Australia should reconsider its opposition to the death penalty. Barnett's views on the death...
California Propositions
Posted on November 05, 2008Here is a bit of good news this morning. With 90% of precincts reporting, it appears that Proposition 9, the crime victims' rights initiative, has passed by a 6% margin. On the same ballot, the Soros-backed Proposition 5 was rejected...
A Bad Omen
Posted on November 05, 2008President-elect Barack Obama has served notice that he does not consider himself bound by anything he said during the campaign. The day after winning on a theme of "postpartisanship," he has chosen as his White House Chief of Staff a...
Redistricting
Posted on November 05, 2008With all precincts reporting, it appears that California voters have finally approved reapportionment reform, Proposition 11, by a scant 100,000 votes out of 9 million. With more competitive districts, the Legislature may be more responsive to the wishes of the...
State AG Races
Posted on November 05, 2008Here are some state attorney general race results gathered from Google News. Ind: Greg Zoeller (R) Mo: Chris Koster (D) Mont: Steve Bullock (D) NC: Roy Cooper (D) Ohio: Richard Cordray (D) Oregon: John Kroger (D) Penn: Tom Corbett (R)...
Exit Poll on Judicial Restraint
Posted on November 05, 2008Here is a press release from "the polling company, inc." on an exit poll of actual voters commissioned by the Federalist Society. By a margin of more than 2-to-1, actual voters preferred the President nominate judges and justices who ?believe...
Blog Scan
Posted on November 05, 2008SCOTUScast on Herring v. United States: At The Federalist Society website, Luke Milligan, an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Louisville provides commentary on the October 7, 2008 oral arguments for Herring v. United States. Herring is an...
Getting Off the Abuser List
Posted on November 05, 2008From the Ninth Circuit today, Humphries v. LA Co., No. 05-56467: Appellants Craig and Wendy Humphries ..., [a]ccused of abuse by a rebellious child, ... were arrested, and had their other children taken away from them.... * * * Notwithstanding the findings...
News Scan
Posted on November 05, 2008Prosecutors To Seek Death Penalty In Cleveland's East 87th Street Fire: According to an article by the News Net 5, prosecutors will seek the death penalty against 24-year-old Antun Lewis. Lewis was indicted in federal court last month. Lewis will...
Bush and SCOTUS
Posted on November 04, 2008Tony Mauro has this long article in Legal Times on President Bush's legacy of Supreme Court appointments. A few excerpts: A new law review study of the Roberts Court?s decisions concludes, in a play on Greenhouse?s 2007 assessment, that ?conservatives...
AEDPA Statute of Limitations, Again
Posted on November 04, 2008The U. S. Supreme Court heard argument today in the case of Jimenez v. Quarterman, No. 07-6984. This is another case on the AEDPA statute of limitations, which generally requires a federal habeas petition to be filed within one year...
Dirty Words
Posted on November 04, 2008The argument transcript in FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., No. 07-582, is available here. This is the "dirty words on television" case. The word index in the back is more interesting than usual. "S-Word" is used 6 times, "F-Word"...
News Scan
Posted on November 04, 2008Oklahoma Court Sets Brown Execution Date: According to an AP article, on Monday the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals set January 22 for the execution of Darwin Demond Brown, convicted for a 1995 slaying in Tulsa. Attorney General Drew Edmondson...
Blog Scan
Posted on November 03, 2008Justice Alito Comments On Life Outside the Cert Pool: Last Friday, Tony Mauro posted on a rare in-chambers interview with Justice Alito. Beginning with a candid look at Justice Alito's post-World Series excitement, Mauro eventually moves on to "Supreme Court...
News Scan
Posted on November 03, 2008Court to Decide Convict's DNA Claim: As reported in Kent Scheidegger's post below, the Supreme Court has agreed to review a Ninth Circuit decision announcing that a convicted murderer has the right to testing of genetic evidence found at the...
Postconviction DNA
Posted on November 03, 2008The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the Ninth Circuit's decision in the Alaska case of District Attorney?s Office for the Third Judicial District, et al. v. Osborne, No. 08-6, regarding a § 1983 suit to get postconviction access to...
SF Hookers Proposition Entire City
Posted on November 03, 2008Propositioning people is what prostitutes do for a living, of course, but not usually on this scale. The hookers of the City by the Bay want the people of San Francisco to de facto legalize their trade by approving Proposition...
Unraveling the Neurolaw Claims
Posted on October 31, 2008Neurolaw is all the rage these days. The lure to explain behavior and social norms such as free will under the lens of reductionist biology abounds. And there is no question that the wealth of information about brains and behavior...
Blog Scan
Posted on October 30, 2008A Hypothetical Obama v. McCain: On October 20, 2008 Election Law @ Moritz, with co-sponsors AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project and the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown's law school, met to conduct a simulated Supreme Court adjudication of a hypothetical case...
Attorney Conflicts and Partitions
Posted on October 30, 2008Today, Cal. Supreme decided In re Charlisse C., S152822. This is a dependency case, but it has implications for criminal cases, such as a case where the public defender represents the defendant and has previously represented a witness for the...
News Scan
Posted on October 30, 2008An Acorn Whistleblower Testifies in Court: According to an editorial by John Fund from the Wall Street Journal, a former employee of Acorn testified in a Pennsylvania state court that the group's quality-control efforts were "minimal or nonexistent" and largely...
Two Murders, Too Many
Posted on October 29, 2008A little over a year ago, we noted the case of Jesus Jihad, formerly Jesse Crisp, who committed murder in 1973, was let out, committed rape in 1993, got out, and then killed again. He stabbed his wife to death...
Blog Scan
Posted on October 29, 2008The Press and the Federal Courts: Today's news seems to be all about how the Presidency can change the federal courts. Over at Wall Street Journal Blog Ashby Jones has a post comparing Monday's Wall Street Journal article by Stephen...
Blog Scan
Posted on October 28, 2008Homeless Sex Offenders in Georgia: At Sex Crimes, Corey Rayburn Young posts on yesterday's decision from the Georgia Supreme Court that a strict sex offender law was unconstitutional because it failed to tell homeless offenders how to comply with the...
"Nonviolent" Offender
Posted on October 28, 2008"Documents show that a suspect in the Chicago murders of three members of Jennifer Hudson's family was arrested for drug possession in June, but state officials didn't revoke his parole," reports John O'Connor for AP. At this point, of course,...
News Scan
Posted on October 28, 2008Rules Limiting Sex Offenders On Halloween Blocked: AP writer Jim Salter reports that a federal judge has ruled that parts of Missouri's new law restricting registered sex offenders' actions on Halloween night are unenforceable, saying the law lacked clarity and...
News Scan
Posted on October 27, 2008Death-Penalty Issue Surfaces In Chief Justice Race: According to a story by AP writer Katie Oyan, the politically charged issue of the death penalty has surfaced in the nonpartisan race for chief justice of the Montana Supreme Court, with one...
Blog Scan
Posted on October 27, 2008Constitutional Comments On The Vice Presidency: At Bench Memos, Matthew J. Franck posts his thoughts on Instapundit Glenn Harlan Reynolds' short op-ed in today's New York Times. The op-ed discusses questions about the constitutional status of the vice presidency that...
Blog Scan
Posted on October 24, 2008Uighurs Denied en banc review: SCOTUSblog has been keeping us updated on the legal battle surrounding District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina?s Oct. 7 ruling that the 17 Chinese Muslim Uighurs be brought to the U.S. and temporarily released into the...
Escape and Trial
Posted on October 24, 2008On Monday, the California Supreme Court will announce its decision in the case of People v. Concepcion, S146288: This case presents the following issues: (1) Is a defendant who escapes from custody after trial commences voluntarily absent from trial, permitting...
Stay in Troy Davis Case
Posted on October 24, 2008AP reports that the Eleventh Circuit has issued a stay in the Troy Davis case, previously discussed in these posts: The Troy Davis Stay Troy Davis and the Georgia Parole Board Troy Davis Goes to SCOTUS Residual Doubt and Commutation...
ABA Florida DP Report, 2 Years Later
Posted on October 24, 2008SL&P points us to this article by Ron Word of AP in Jacksonville, Florida, regarding the nonimpact of the ABA report on Florida's death penalty, issued two years ago. The first paragraph of the article refers to the report as...
News Scan
Posted on October 23, 2008Court Stops Scheduled Execution: AP writer Michael Graczyk reports that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stopped the scheduled execution of convicted killer Bobby Wayne Woods today after lawyers raised new claims that the 42-year-old man is mentally retarded and...
Rudy on Obama on Mandatory Minimums
Posted on October 22, 2008It appears that the crime issue is finally being seriously raised in the presidential campaign. This story from Alexander Mooney at CNN reports that Rudy Giuliani has recorded a "robocall" saying "Obama opposes 'mandatory prison sentences for sex offenders, drug...
News Scan
Posted on October 22, 2008San Francisco Weighs Decriminalizing Prostitution: AP writer Evelyn Nieves reports that SF would become the first major U.S. city to decriminalize prostitution if voters next month approve Proposition K - a measure that forbids local authorities from investigating, arresting or...
Blog Scan
Posted on October 21, 2008Analyzing Justice Thomas' Thoughts On Originalism: Yesterday we had a post on Justice Clarence Thomas' lecture to the Manhattan Institute. Jack Balkin, at Balkinzation, posted the same excerpt from the Wall Street Journal, and offered his thoughts on whether Justice...
News Scan
Posted on October 21, 2008Court Won't Consider Neb. "Rape" Testimony Issue: According to an article by AP press writer Jean Ortiz, the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal involving a case in which a Nebraska judge banned anyone from saying "rape"...
Tough as a $3 Steak
Posted on October 20, 2008Tony Mauro's Courtside column has more reaction to Chief Justice Roberts' detective-novel-style dissent from denial of certiorari in Pennsylvania v. Dunlap. Surprisingly, with all the speculation over why the opinion is written in this unusual style, no one else seems...
Cert. Granted on Agg. ID Theft
Posted on October 20, 200818 U.S.C. § 1028A(a) defines the crime of "aggravated identity theft." "Whoever, during and in relation to any felony violation enumerated in subsection (c), knowingly transfers, possesses, or uses, without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person shall,...
How to Read the Constitution
Posted on October 20, 2008The WSJ has this excerpt of Justice Clarence Thomas's lecture to the Manhattan Institute Friday. He notes the fundamental question of judicial review is "what restrains us from imposing our personal views and policy preferences on our fellow citizens under...
The Bradley Effect
Posted on October 20, 2008California political consultant Sal Russo has this op-ed in the WSJ, making one more game try at refuting the persistent myth of the "Bradley effect." George Deukmejian's come-from-behind win for California Governor in 1982 was based on issues, especially crime...
News Scan
Posted on October 20, 2008Crime Spike Linked To Prop 36: According to an article from the Ventura County Star by Kathleen Wilson, arrests for drug and property crimes have increased since California voters adopted Proposition 36, eight years ago. The measure initiated a sweeping...
News Scan
Posted on October 17, 2008More Appeals for Baze & Bowling: After losing their U.S. Supreme Court challenge to lethal injection last April, double murderers Ralph Baze and Clyde Bowling, Jr. may be down to their last appeal. A story by Beth Musgrave in today's...
Recall Effort Terminated
Posted on October 17, 2008Here is another scrap of good political news. Don Thompson reports for AP, "A powerful union representing California prison guards on Thursday dropped its recall campaign against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, saying it will instead focus on ballot questions and pointing...
Blog Scan
Posted on October 17, 2008Supreme Court Lifts Ohio Federal Judge Voter Order: At SCOTUSblog, Lyle Denniston reports that today the Supreme Court lifted an order that would have required Ohio's Secretary of State to verify voter registration across the state before the November election...
A Government of Men and Not Laws
Posted on October 16, 2008Jonathan Adler at VC has posted an excerpt of the debate where Senators McCain and Obama discuss what kinds of judges they will appoint. Nothing really new here. It reinforces what we already knew. Barack Obama will appoint judges who...
News Scan
Posted on October 16, 2008Teen Convicted of Santa Barbara Street Killing: An AP article reports that a 15-year-old gang member has been convicted of voluntary manslaughter for the stabbing death of a teen during a daytime brawl on Santa Barbara's State Street last year....
Blog Scan
Posted on October 16, 2008Ohio Election Officials Seek To Block Voter Challenging Rule: At SCOTUSblog, Lyle Denniston posts on an application for a stay filed last night in the Supreme Court, asking the Supreme Court to put a hold on a federal judge's order...
Service of Process
Posted on October 15, 2008Nebraska's crackpot State Senator Ernie Chambers sued God last year. His suit was thrown out today for defective service of process, Nate Jenkins reports for AP. "The Almighty wasn't properly served due to his unlisted home address. " Chambers is...
Cunningham Aftermath
Posted on October 15, 2008In 1996, when Congress cracked down severely on habeas corpus petitions by prisoners who had already had one such review, it left an exception for "new rules of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme...
Proposition 5 and Drug Courts
Posted on October 15, 2008The Stockton Record has this editorial on several of the California ballot propositions. Here is the portion on Proposition 5: "This is a bad idea masquerading as a good law. And what it would do is undermine, more likely destroy,...
News Scan
Posted on October 15, 2008Mother of Missing Florida Toddler Makes Initial Court Appearance on Murder Charges: An article from the Fox News states that the mother of missing Florida toddler Caylee Anthony made her initial court appearance this morning on first-degree murder and other...
Canada Election
Posted on October 15, 2008Here is some good election news for those badly in need of some. Unfortunately, it is north of the border. The Conservative Party won the election in Canada, increasing its representation although still short of an outright majority. "The outcome...
Arguments Today
Posted on October 15, 2008Today, I expect, will be spank the Ninth Circuit again day at the U.S. Supreme Court. On the docket are two habeas cases, Waddington v. Sarausad and Hedgpeth v. Pulido (formerly Chrones v. Pulido). Ben Winograd has this post at...
Roads Not Taken
Posted on October 14, 2008Also out today are two opinions dissenting from denial of certiorari. In Marlowe v. United States Justice Scalia dissents from the Court's refusal to examine the sentence of a prison guard convicted of violating the civil rights of a prisoner...
Reconsider, and We Really Mean It
Posted on October 14, 2008The first opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court's new term is out. Moore v. United States is a summary per curiam opinion, spanking the Eighth Circuit for an inadequate job of reconsidering its prior opinion in light of last term's...
Orders List
Posted on October 14, 2008The U.S. Supreme Court orders list is available here. One civil case was taken up. Among the denials was the controversial Georgia capital case of Troy Davis, previously noted here, here, and here....
Last Meal
Posted on October 14, 2008Richard Cooey, who claims he is too fat to be executed humanely and it's all the prison's fault, ordered a last meal of "T-bone steak with A-1 sauce, onion rings, french fries, four eggs over easy, toast with butter, hash...
Blog Scan
Posted on October 14, 2008An Internet Harassment Decision That Has Some Worried About Criminal Libel: Eugene Volokh has an interesting post on an Internet harassment case decided last week by the Ohio Court of Appeals. The title asks "The Return of Criminal Libel, With...
Notes on the Oregon v. Ice Argument
Posted on October 14, 2008In Oregon v. Ice, the Supreme Court heard argument on whether the Apprendi line of cases, requiring jury trial for facts that increase the maximum sentence that may be imposed, should be extended to cover consecutive as opposed to concurrent...
Notes on the Pearson v. Callahan Argument
Posted on October 14, 2008The transcript in Pearson v. Callahan is available here. The case involves a civil suit against police who entered a house to make a drug arrest under the "consent once removed" exception. This problematic theory posits that once the drug...
News Scan
Posted on October 14, 2008Cooey Executed After Supreme Court Rejects Obese Argument: An article from CNN News reports that an Ohio death row inmate Richard Cooey was executed today after the Supreme Court rejected his last-minute plea that he was too fat to be...
Remembering Dawn McCreery and Wendy Offredo
Posted on October 13, 2008The Cleveland Plain Dealer has this story by Michael McIntyre on Dawn McCreery, Wendy Offredo, and their families. The two college girls were murdered a little over 22 years ago. Richard Cooey has lived longer on death row than Dawn...
Blog Scan
Posted on October 13, 2008Former Guantanamo Bay Prosecutor Turns Against Tribunals: Dan Slater at Wall Street Journal Blog posted a story on former U.S. Prosecutor Darrel J. Vandeveld. According to the post, Vandeveld was a U.S. Prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay actively involved in prosecuting...
News Scan
Posted on October 13, 2008Santa Ana Teen Gets 25 To Life In Mom's Killing: AP reports that a 19-year-old convicted of stabbing her mother to death and dumping her body in the ocean was sentenced Friday to 25 years to life in prison. The...
Blog Scan
Posted on October 10, 2008Justice Department Moves to Further Delay in Bringing Detainees into U.S.: Wednesday, Lyle Denniston reported at SCOTUSblog that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals had temporarily blocked the entry of the 17 Chinese Muslims that Federal Judge Urbina had ordered...
Attorney-Client Privilege Waiver
Posted on October 09, 2008Congress recently added Rule 502 to the Federal Rules of Evidence in Senate Bill 2450 (Leahy, Graham, Specter), enacted as Pub. L. 100-322, Sept. 19, 2008, 122 Stat. 3537. Senate Report 110-264 is available on the Senate Judiciary Committee site....
News Scan
Posted on October 09, 2008Pittsburgh Approves $200K To Study Violence: Jeremy Boren from the Tribune-Review reports that Pittsburgh City Council approved legislation Tuesday to spend $200,000 on an anti-violence program intended to begin reducing the number of homicides within six months...
Judicial Activism
Posted on October 09, 2008CJLF's Legal Director Kent Scheidegger has this letter to the editor in USA Today, responding to this editorial last Monday. Where the letter says "the people's right of self-government," the editors added a link to the Declaration of Independence. That...
Blog Scan
Posted on October 09, 2008Guantanamo Detainee Update: At SCOTUSblog, Lyle Denniston provided this follow-up to his posts on the government's attempt to prevent U.S. entry of 17 Guantanamo Bay detainees. Earlier in the week, we posted on the federal court order of Judge Urbina...
Blog Scan
Posted on October 08, 2008Oral Argument Summaries: At SCOTUSblog Kevin Russell posts his analysis of the oral arguments in Arizona v. Gant, 07-542 and Herring v. United States, 07-513 . The two cases address different questions involving the Fourth Amendment. Herring asks whether the...
Arizona v. Gant: A Bright-Line Too Far?
Posted on October 08, 2008Unlike the Herring case, noted here, the issue in Arizona v. Gant, also argued yesterday, is purely on the substantive scope of the Fourth Amendment. The tone of the argument is quite different. In particular, Justice Scalia comes across quite...
News Scan
Posted on October 08, 2008Fourth Amendment Arguments: Adam Liptak has this story in the NYT on the Gant and Herring arguments. After noting the endless variation in scenarios of Fourth Amendment cases, he observes, "these cases were more interesting than usual, thanks to a...
Herring, Barney Fife, and Elephants
Posted on October 08, 2008"But there is not a Barney Fife defense to violation of the Fourth Amendment, either." Pamela Karlan, for the defendant, got off that good line in yesterday's oral argument in Herring v. United States, No. 07-513. On the whole...
Blog Scan
Posted on October 07, 200817 Guantanamo Detainees Ordered Into U.S. By Friday: Ben Winograd at SCOTUSblog has a post on federal Judge Ricardo Urbina's order that the government release a group of 17 Chinese Muslims, the Uighurs, into the United States by Friday, October...
Arguing over Arguing
Posted on October 07, 2008Here is one more nugget from yesterday's SCOTUS orders list. In the Rhode Island Indian law case of Carcieri v. Kempthorne, No. 07-526, the Court denied all the motions for divided argument. Tony Mauro at BLT has this post over...
ACORN office in Vegas raided
Posted on October 07, 2008During the debate last year over Crawford v. Marion County Election Bd., No. 07-21, it was common for opponents of voter ID to claim that voting fraud was essentially nonexistent and that the ID requirement was concocted to harass poor...
News Scan
Posted on October 07, 2008Mom Who Drove Kids to Gang Fight Convicted of Murder: An article from the KTLA News reports that a Long Beach woman accused of driving her teenage son and his friends to confront a rival gang has been convicted of...
Blog Scan
Posted on October 06, 2008The Blogs Are Alive With The Sound of Opening Arguments: With the first Monday in October came opening arguments at the United States Supreme Court, as well as several blog posts reporting on its activities. SCOTUSblog has a post reporting...
Cert. denial for Abu-Jamal
Posted on October 06, 2008Deep in today's orders list is a denial of certiorari in Abu-Jamal v. Pennsylvania, No. 08-5456. An AP story reports, "The justices did not comment on their action Monday, which leaves in place a federal appeals court ruling that upholds...
News Scan
Posted on October 06, 2008New Law Prohibits Sex Offenders From 'Clustering': An article from Bay News 9 reports that leaders in Hillsborough County, Florida recently passed a new law that prohibits groups of sex offenders from clustering in one neighborhood. The law prohibits sex...
Nebraska's Death Penalty
Posted on October 06, 2008Among the cases denied review by the Supreme Court today was Mata v. Nebraska, No. 08-5204. As previously noted here, Nebraska's Supreme Court held that the electric chair, the only method of execution authorized by state statute, violates the state's...
Nonbarking dogs from the Long Conference
Posted on October 06, 2008Last week the Supreme Court announced that it had granted review of 10 cases, 7 of them criminal, from the "long conference" preceding the opening of the term. Today, the Court issued the opening orders list of the term. As...
Bell v. Kelly: What is a "Claim"?
Posted on October 03, 2008In 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), the cornerstone reform of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Congress provided that a federal court cannot grant relief on a claim denied on the merits by a state court unless certain...
News Scan
Posted on October 03, 2008Army to Focus on Sexual Assault: Responding to Pentagon data indicating that 2.6 soldiers per 1,000 reported a sexual assault last year, the U.S. Army is launching a new effort to prevent the crime. A Wall Street Journal piece by...
Blog Scan
Posted on October 02, 2008President Bush to Speak on Presidency and the Courts in Cincinnati: Tony Mauro reports at the BLT that President Bush will be speaking at a Federalist Society's conference on The Presidency and The Courts next Monday. Both the Cincinnati chapter...
News Scan
Posted on October 02, 2008Ohio Court Upholds Retroactive Application of Sex Offender Law: According to an article by Mary Beth Lane, from the Columbus Dispatch, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled yesterday that it is constitutional to retroactively enforce a 2003 law that toughened reporting...
Obama as Victims' Advocate?
Posted on October 01, 2008Jonathan Martin has this story at Politico. Barack Obama's campaign earlier this month sought to find a rape victim to appear in a campaign commercial, according to an e-mail obtained by Politico. Kiersten Steward, director of public policy at the...
News Scan
Posted on October 01, 2008October Marks Crime Prevention Month, Identity Theft is #1 Crime: According to an article from the MarketWatch News, the U.S. Department of Justice has reported identity theft is the number one crime in the nation. This fast-growing crime is costing....
No Rehearing for Kennedy
Posted on October 01, 2008As predicted, the Supreme Court has denied rehearing for Kennedy v. Louisiana. The Supreme Court had asked for additional briefing in early September, but today, the Court refused to rehear its June decision. Instead, the Court has modified the Kennedy...
No SCOTUS Orders Today
Posted on September 30, 2008Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog reports that the Supreme Court will not release an orders list today. Yesterday was the "long conference" at which the Court considered all the petitions built up over the summer asking the Court to accept cases...
Blog Scan
Posted on September 30, 2008Supreme Court Review of Military Convictions: Wall Street Journal's Law Blog has a post from Dan Slater concerning legislation that could allow for Supreme Court review of certain petitions by military service members convicted of crimes. The current law, the...
News Scan
Posted on September 30, 2008New Hampshire Poll: Support For Death Penalty In Cop Killing: An article from the Boston News reports that a new poll shows more than half of New Hampshire residents believe the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for someone who...
News Scan
Posted on September 29, 2008Gun Groups To Appeal Decision To Toss Ga. Lawsuit: AP reports that gun rights groups are appealing a ruling that dismissed a lawsuit seeking the right to carry guns in parts of the world's busiest airport. U.S. District Judge Marvin...
Blog Scan
Posted on September 29, 2008Supreme Court's Opening Conference: SCOTUSblog posted yesterday on the Court's upcoming week. The Supremes will hold their opening conference today, and are scheduled to review a petition for rehearing in Kennedy v. Louisiana. SCOTUSblog expects the Court to release orders...
News Scan
Posted on September 26, 2008Longer Sentence for Hamdan? Military prosecutors have asked for a new sentencing hearing for Salim Hamdan, who had previously received 5 1/2 years for supporting terrorism. AP writer Mike Melia reports that Hamdan, who was Osama bin Laden's driver, received...
Blog Scan
Posted on September 25, 2008The Bailout and Separation of Powers: Bench Memos has a post from Robert Alt that directs readers to a Heritage Foundation piece discussing some of "fundamental constitutional values at stake" in the bailout debate. Some of the concerns the article...
News Scan
Posted on September 24, 2008Fed. judge in Va. rejects sniper Muhammad's appeal: That's the headline of an AP story on both the WaPo and SFChron sites, but the story doesn't seem to have any text as of this writing. Next stop, the Fourth Circuit....
The Troy Davis Stay
Posted on September 24, 2008Robbie Brown has this story in the NYT on the Supreme Court's stay of execution for Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis. Yours truly is quoted near the end: Kent Scheidegger, a death penalty expert at the Criminal Justice Legal...
News Scan
Posted on September 23, 2008Florida Killer's Execution Scheduled Tonight: From the Orlando Sentinel, writer Stephen Hudak reports that Richard Henyard is scheduled for execution for the murders of two Lake County girls. Today he will become the 66th person executed by the state since...
Troy Davis and the Georgia Parole Board
Posted on September 23, 2008The Georgia Parole Board issued this press release Monday on the Troy Davis case. The full text is also quoted after the jump, in case they remove the page linked here. It's good that they made an exception to their...
Blog Scan
Posted on September 23, 2008District Court Nominees Stalled: Jonathan Adler and Matthew Franck each have a post on Bench Memos reporting on stalled district court nominations. Adler reports the Senate Judiciary Committee was supposed to approve five nominees last Thursday, but because Senator Jon...
News Scan
Posted on September 22, 2008S.C. To Consider Ex-Judge?s Duty to Disclose Censure: According to a story by the MetNews, the California Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether a retired L.A. Superior Court judge had a duty to disclose his censure for making offensive...
Blog Scan
Posted on September 22, 2008October Oral Arguments: Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog reports the Supreme Court has released a new calendar for oral arguments in October. The new calendar can be found here. The revised sitting schedule has the Supreme Court hearing oral arguments in...
News Scan
Posted on September 19, 2008The Maryland Death Penalty should "stand as written, and be used more often to serve the citizens" writes Paul Highbarger in an Op Ed in today's Baltimore Sun. Governor Martin O'Malley has received legislative authorization to appoint a commission to...
Blog Scan
Posted on September 18, 2008A Reason to Be A Skeptical Reader and A Careful Author: At Wall Street Journal's Law Blog, Dan Slater reports that the Dean of Tulane Law School has apologized to the Louisiana Supreme Court for errors in a professor-authored law...
Blog Scan
Posted on September 17, 2008Federal Sentencing Data from US Sentencing Commission: Doug Berman posted the links to three new data sets that the US Sentencing Commission posted on its website this morning. His post has links to the September 2008 update of the U.S....
News Scan
Posted on September 17, 2008Montpelier Restored: On the 221st anniversary of the Constitutional Convention's completion of its work, the restoration of James Madison's home, Montpelier, was unveiled. Carlos Santos has this story for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito were on-hand...
Troy Davis Goes to SCOTUS
Posted on September 16, 2008Troy Anthony Davis is scheduled for execution in Georgia a week from now for the murder of police officer Mark Allen MacPhail. Prior posts here, here, and here. He has applied to the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of...
Blog Scan
Posted on September 16, 2008U.S. Files to Head Off Sanctions For Failure to Meet Deadlines: Lyle Denniston reported at SCOTUSblog that the U.S. has filed a reply motion for partial and temporary relief from the Guantanamo district court's July 11 scheduling order. In its...
News Scan
Posted on September 16, 2008India?s Use of Brain Scans in Courts Is Debated: NY Times writer Anand Giridharadas, reports that India has become the first country to convict someone of a crime relying on evidence from a brain scan. This controversial machine involves a...
Eyewitness Research
Posted on September 16, 2008The September 2008 issue of Applied Cognitive Psychology is a special issue on eyewitness research. The Psychology and Crime News blog has this summary....
News Scan
Posted on September 15, 2008Death Penalty Is Upheld in Publicized Georgia Case: New York Times writer Robbie Brown, reports that the Georgia parole board has denied clemency to Troy Davis, sentenced to death for the killing a Savannah police officer in 1989. Davis, 39,...
Reflexive Support for a Crook
Posted on September 15, 2008Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald has this column on the remarkably slow decline and fall of Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Pitts compares the agonizing year it took to get rid of Kilpatrick with the sudden departure of Eliot Spitzer,...
Crime Down a Little in Annual FBI Report
Posted on September 15, 2008The FBI has released it annual Crime in the United States report. The overall violent crime rate is down 1.4% from 2006. (The AP story reports that violent crimes are down 0.7%, but that is total crimes, not per capita...
Blog Scan
Posted on September 15, 2008Senate Impact on Liberal Judicial Nominees: On Saturday, Jonathan Adler posted his thoughts on whether conservatives would attempt to block any of Obama's judicial nominees. Adler's post was prompted by this MSNBC article. While Adler states he probably won't like...
Blog Scan
Posted on September 12, 2008Some New SSRN Articles: Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy has this post with links to two new articles on SSRN. The first article, Prosecutorial Shaming by Adam M. Gershowitz, examines "instances in which appellate courts reverse convictions for...
News Scan
Posted on September 12, 2008Tracking Terrorists: New guidelines for identifying terrorists within the United States, which would give the FBI tools currently used against organized crime, were proposed today according to this AP story by Larry Hargasak. If adopted, the guidelines would allow agents...
Blog Scan
Posted on September 11, 2008Guantanamo Detainees Seek to Attend Hearing: Lyle Denniston reports at SCOTUSblog that lawyers for the Uighurs - the Chinese Muslims being held at Guantanamo - have filed a motion requesting that four of the 17 detainees be flown to Washington,...
News Scan
Posted on September 11, 20083 Death Row Inmates Executed Under Japan's New Justice Minister's Orders: A news article from the Mainichi Daily News, reports that the first executions in Japan in about three months occurred Thursday, the Ministry of Justice announced. It was the...
Lest We Repeat
Posted on September 11, 2008On the seventh anniversary of the 9/11/01 attack on America, we must remember those who died that awful day. Just as importantly, we must remember the mistakes that made us vulnerable so that we do not repeat them. Many of...
More on the Hood Case
Posted on September 10, 2008The strange case of Texas murderer Charles Dean Hood is mentioned, with links to blog and news coverage, in today's Blog Scan and News Scan. The decision of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is here. The court denies the...
The KKK and the SoL
Posted on September 10, 2008Last year, former Klansman James Ford Seale was convicted in federal court of kidnapping Henry Dee and Charles Moore in 1964. The victims were not only kidnapped, they were killed, but murder as such is not a federal offense. One...
Blog Scan
Posted on September 10, 2008Execution Delayed: Dan Slater at the Wall Street Journal Law Blog posted this morning on the postponed execution of Charles Dean Hood. Our News Scan has the link to the AP story. Yesterday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted...
News Scan
Posted on September 10, 2008Texas Death Row Inmate Gets Execution Postponed: AP writer, Schuyler Dixon, reports that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals postponed Charles Dean Hood's execution, scheduled for Wednesday, because it wanted to reconsider whether the jury instructions were flawed...
Ohio's New Self-Defense Law
Posted on September 09, 2008Yesterday, Cleveland's Plain Dealer Politics Blog had this post from Reginald Fields. The post discusses SB184, Ohio's new "Castle Doctrine" law. The law creates a rebuttable presumption that person acts in self-defense when he uses force against someone who...
Is Crime Off the Voters' Radar?
Posted on September 09, 2008We haven't heard much about crime in the present election campaign. Does that means it's off the voters' radar screen? Maybe. In this WaPo/ABC survey, voters are asked what is the single most important issue (question 5), and crime isn't...
News Scan
Posted on September 09, 2008Wales Has The Third Highest Rate Of Violent Crime In The World, according to a story written by David James from the Western Mail. Alcohol-fuelled fights in Welsh towns and city centres has been a primary cause. Only England and...
New Briefing on Capital Child Rape Case
Posted on September 09, 2008The U.S. Supreme Court has asked for additional briefing on the rehearing petition in the capital child rape case decided in June, Kennedy v. Louisiana. This is most unusual. Rehearing petitions in cases decided after full briefing and argument are...
SCOTUS Argument Calendar, Criminal & Related
Posted on September 08, 2008Here are the criminal and related cases for the October, November, and December calendars of the U.S. Supreme Court. The link in the case number for each case is to the docket, which in turn has a link to the...
News Scan
Posted on September 08, 2008U.S. Sentencing Panel to Focus On Alternatives to Jail: According to a story written by Gary Fields from the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. sentencing panel plans to focus on developing alternatives to incarceration, setting up a possible clash with...
News Scan
Posted on September 05, 2008A California ballot measure that purports to help drug offenders is being opposed by virtually every law enforcement organization in the state. Proposition 5, The Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act of 2008 (NORA) allows drug users arrested for "non-violent" felonies including...
Texas AG Supports Inquiry Before Execution
Posted on September 05, 2008From an article by Diane Jennings in the Dallas Morning News: The Texas attorney general's office on Thursday took the unusual step of joining the defense in saying that death row inmate Charles Dean Hood should not die until after...
Blog Scan
Posted on September 05, 2008No Action in Kennedy v. Louisiana: Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog reports that while the Supreme Court issued its final round of summer recess orders today, there was "no action announced" on whether it would reconsider Kennedy v. Louisiana. The State....
Blog Scan
Posted on September 04, 2008Supreme Court to Review Cert. Petition on "Victim Impact Evidence": Over the weekend, Ben Winograd at SCOTUSblog put up this post on Kelly v. California (07-11073), a capital case the Supreme Court will examine during its opening conference at the...
Demonstrations in St. Paul
Posted on September 04, 2008The WSJ has this article by T. W. Farnam on "demonstrations" aimed at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. Although I didn't think so at first, on reflection I believe that "demonstration" is the correct word. These people have...
News Scan
Posted on September 04, 2008Detroit Mayor Pleads Guilty And Agrees To Resign: According to a story in today's New York Times by Susan Saulny, the mayor of Detroit, Kwame M. Kilpatrick, 38, has pleaded guilty and agreed to resign this morning after months of...
Orders List Tomorrow
Posted on September 04, 2008The U.S. Supreme Court will issue the third and last of its summer orders lists tomorrow. The Court's press release last June noted, "Summer order lists usually consist of actions taken by the Court on motions in pending cases, petitions...
News Scan
Posted on September 03, 2008Illegal Immigration: The ACLU has filed a lawsuit to block an executive order by the Governor of Rhode Island cracking down on illegal immigrants. A story by AP writer Ray Henry reports that Governor Carcieri has ordered employers doing business...
Dress Codes and State Action
Posted on September 03, 2008The Ninth Circuit en banc today decided Villegas v. Gilroy Garlic Festival, No. 05-15725: We must decide whether guests at the Gilroy Garlic Festival can hold the City of Gilroy in California and the Gilroy Garlic Festival Association liable in...
Blog Scan
Posted on September 02, 20082007 Federal Criminal Caseload Statistics: Hattip to Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy for his post and link to data statistics on the federal criminal prosecutions in district courts over various years. Berman notes that federal bank robbery prosecutions...
News Scan
Posted on September 02, 2008Australia's Approach to Serial Child Sex Offenders: A serial sex offender already jailed indefinitely for previous sexual crimes, has been sentenced to another 12 months' imprisonment according to a story written by Christine Flatley from The Australian...
VP Candidates and Crime
Posted on August 30, 2008A few notes on the Vice-President candidates and crime: The Pewsitter website has a set of quotes from Gov. Sarah Palin, including this one from her 2006 campaign site: "I support adequate funding for a strong public safety presence in...
News Scan
Posted on August 29, 2008New Hearing for Mississippi Murderer: Daily Journal reporter Patsy Brumfield has this story on the Mississippi Supreme Court decision to grant a hearing to review claims raised by Marlon Howell, convicted in 2000 of murdering a 61-year-old retiree who supplemented...
Anthony Porter, Reconsidered
Posted on August 28, 2008"It's not what we don't know that gets us in trouble, it's what we know for a fact that just ain't so." One of the things everybody in the death penalty debate knows for a fact is that Anthony Porter...
Blog Scan
Posted on August 28, 2008Justice Department May Seek To Restrain DTA Review: Lyle Denniston reported at SCOTUSblog yesterday that the Justice Department is considering asking the Supreme Court to curb the authority of the federal appeals court to review military decisions to hold the...
News Scan
Posted on August 28, 2008Meth Houses: The Sheriff's Department in Jefferson County Missouri has started posting the locations where evidence of methamphetamine production has been found. An AP story, by Betsy Taylor in today's San Francisco Chronicle, reports that the public can log on...
News Scan
Posted on August 27, 2008Violent Inmates Released: California has released almost 5,000 prison inmates without the required screening for violent criminals who should have been held, according to this AP story by Don Thompson. A state audit of inmate releases between January 2007 and...
News Scan
Posted on August 26, 2008U.S. Border Security has been tightened on concerns that Mexican drug cartels may send hit men across the border according to this AP story in today's San Francisco Chronicle. A spokesman for the U.S. Boarder Patrol said that they had...
News Scan
Posted on August 25, 2008Strip Searches Ruled Unconstitutional: In a divided ruling announced last Friday, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held San Francisco's policy of strip searching all arrestees to be housed in the jail's general population unconstitutional. The lead opinion In...
News Scan
Posted on August 22, 2008SF Dog Mauling defendant Marjorie Knoller's conviction for second degree murder was reinstated today. A SF Chronicle story by Bob Egelko reports that Knoller had been charged with second-degree murder after her two 100lb+ attack dogs mauled 33-year-old Dianne Whipple...
Blog Scan
Posted on August 22, 2008Detainee Habeas Cases Heard In Federal Court: At SCOTUSblog, Lyle Denniston reports that U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon will hear the first detainee habeas case on Monday, October 6th, 2008. Denniston notes this is the very same day...
News Scan
Posted on August 21, 2008Another Illegal habitual criminal protected from deportation by San Francisco's sanctuary policy has been charged with the attempted murder of a man in Daly City. A San Francisco Chronicle story by Jaxon Van Derbeken reports that Mexican national Eric Antonio...
Parole Decision
Posted on August 21, 2008The California Supreme Court today, 4-3, overturned Gov. Schwarzenegger's decision to deny parole to Sandra Lawrence, who murdered her lover's wife and then spent 11 years on the lam before surrendering in 1982. Justice Ming Chin wrote the dissent: The...
News Scan
Posted on August 20, 2008Mexico, as noted earlier, is rethinking its 2005 decision to abolish the death penalty. A poll reported today by Canadian pollster Angus Reid Global Monitor found that 68% of Mexicans support the death penalty for rape, 64% for homicide, and...
News Scan
Posted on August 19, 2008Accomplice faces execution in Texas Thursday, as reported in this AP story by Michael Graczyk. In 1996 Jeffery Wood and Daniel Reneau robbed a convenience store in the Texas Hill Country. During the robbery Reneau shot and killed the clerk...
Death by "Reform"
Posted on August 18, 2008Beware of reformers. Enthusiastic activists often dismiss weighty arguments on the other side and propose cures that end up being worse than the disease. So it was with the drive to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill. Certainly, there were abuses. Certainly,...
Intervenor Liability in the Ninth Circuit
Posted on August 18, 2008Last Friday, the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion in Costco v. Hoen. The decision, authored by Judge Milan Smith, addressed whether an intervenor-appellee who "materially assisted state defendants through the litigation, and... had much at stake financially" could be...
News Scan
Posted on August 18, 2008Nevada's Sex Offender Law is being challenged in federal court, as reported in this AP story by Ken Ritter. Lawyers representing 27 unnamed plaintiffs in a federal civil rights lawsuit claim that a law which creates an internet accessible state...
System Maintenance
Posted on August 15, 2008The blog is undergoing maintenance. Posts will be limited and some links may not work. We should be back in full operation in a few days. Update, 3:00 PT: Everything should be working now....
News Scan
Posted on August 14, 2008Murderer Volunteers for DP: Texas cop killer Michael Rodriguez, who has waived his appeals and agreed to receive his sentence, is scheduled to be executed today. A story by Michael Graczyk of the Houston Chronicle reports that Rodriquez, one of...
Three Experts in a Tub
Posted on August 12, 2008Adam Liptak at the NYT compares expert testimony in the U.S. with other countries. Particularly interesting is the Australian "hot tub" system. In that procedure, also called concurrent evidence, experts are still chosen by the parties, but they testify together...
News Scan
Posted on August 12, 2008Venting Against DP: Brooklyn federal district judge Frederick Block said yesterday that the people of New York are against the death penalty, except for cop killers, and that the U.S. Attorney ought to stop seeking it. The judge's remarks before...
Blog Scan
Posted on August 11, 2008The "I Didn't Know I Was A Felon" Defense: Over at Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene Volokh has a post on the Eastern District of Pennsylvania's decision in U.S. v. Kitsch. The decision holds that Kitsch could only be guilty of violating...
News Scan
Posted on August 11, 2008More Power to SCOTUS, according to AEI visiting scholar John Yoo. Discussing the winners and losers in Court's recent term in today's Philadelphia Inquirer he writes "....the biggest winner by far was the court itself. Slowly but surely, the justices...
Blog Scan
Posted on August 08, 2008Justice Department Seeks to Limit District Court Authority to Transfer Detainees: At SCOTUSblog, Lyle Denniston posts that the Justice Department has filed two appeals seeking resolution of whether District Court Judges have the authority to issue orders that regulate the...
News Scan
Posted on August 08, 2008DC Guns: David Kopel and Robert Levy have this op-ed in the WSJ calling on Congress to fix DC's latest gun law. A bill called the District of Columbia Personal Protection Act, H.R. 1399 and S. 1001, is available on...
News Scan
Posted on August 07, 2008Medellin Video: Video of the Lou Dobbs piece noted in yesterday's News Scan is available here. Hamdan Sentence: Al-Qaeda small fry Salim Hamdan was sentenced to 5 1/2 years, with credit for the 61 months already detained, by the military...
Blog Scan
Posted on August 06, 2008Commentary on Medellin Execution: Lyle Denniston posted a commentary on the Supreme Court's recent decisions of Medellin, Kennedy, and the "meaning of silence" at SCOTUSblog today. Denniston finds it significant that in these two recent death penalty cases, the silence...
News Scan
Posted on August 06, 2008Bin Laden's Driver Convicted: A military court has convicted Salim Hamdan of supporting terrorism as reported in this AP story by Mike Melia. Hamdan could be sentenced to life in prison at a hearing which will be held today. Victim...
Medellin Coverage
Posted on August 06, 2008Here is some morning-after coverage of the Medellin execution. Michael Graczyk has this story for AP, and we finally get some coverage of the fact that Medellin has already had the judicial prejudice determination required by the Avena holding. "State...
Medellin Execution
Posted on August 05, 2008As of 6:16 CDT, the Houston Chronicle reports that Texas is waiting to hear from the U.S. Supreme Court before proceeding with the execution of Jose Medellin. Update: The Supreme Court denied the habeas petition and stay 5-4, and Medellin...
Medellin Has Already Received the Review Required by Avena
Posted on August 05, 2008"The Bush administration, the Mexican government and much of the diplomatic community have warned of an international backlash if the execution goes forward without a hearing on Medellin’s claim that he was denied an opportunity to contact the Mexican consulate...
News Scan
Posted on August 04, 2008Hand Wringing Over Medellin: Texas has defied the entire civilized world by refusing to delay the execution of confessed rapist/murderer Jose Ernesto Medellin, according to this story by Alan Turner from today's Houston Chronicle. Medellin. a Mexican citizen, was convicted...
News Scan
Posted on August 01, 2008Former Death Row Inmate Free After Guilty Plea: After two retrials and 17 years in prison, Michael Mordenti pleaded guilty to two charges related to a 1989 murder-for-hire. Mordenti was sentenced to 25 years for murder and conspiracy but he...
News Scan
Posted on July 31, 2008Inmate Confesses to Murder, Halts Execution: Thomas Arthur received his third stay of execution on Wednesday after Bobby Ray Gilbert, in prison for murder, signed a sworn statement that he committed the murder for which Arthur was convicted. Judy Wicker,...
News Scan
Posted on July 30, 2008Legal Rights for Detainees a Tool for Terrorists?: In her op-ed for the WSJ, Debra Burlingame illustrates the likely repercussions of traditional trials for Guantanamo detainees, particularly emphasizing the risk to Americans if other countries refuse to accept prisoner transfers...
Blog Scan
Posted on July 29, 2008Court-Martial Death Sentence For Serial Rapist-Murderer: This morning, Dan Slater posted links to the New York Times and AP articles on the President's approval of the death penalty for Ronald A. Gray at the Wall Street Journal Blog. Our News...
News Scan
Posted on July 29, 2008President Approves Soldier's Execution for Murder: A request to execute a member of the military has not been made since 1962, and one hasn't been granted since 1957. That changed yesterday when President Bush approved the execution of Army Private...
Endorsement for Obama
Posted on July 29, 2008Though little noticed in the national press, Barack Obama picked up an endorsement last week, according to this report by Kathleen Baydala in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. "'For those who oppose the death penalty and want to see it end, our...
Ramirez on Hamdan
Posted on July 29, 2008My favorite political cartoonist is Michael Ramirez of Investors Business Daily. (He used to be with the LA Times, which made a huge mistake in letting him go.) Not only are his cartoons funny and insightful, but he actually knows...
Blog Scan
Posted on July 28, 2008U.S. Asks Supreme Court to Rehear Kennedy v. Louisiana: Last week, Louisiana asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rehear the 5-4 decision of Kennedy v. Louisiana. Today, Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog reports that the Justice Department has filed a motion...
News Scan
Posted on July 28, 2008Serial Rapist Commits Suicide as Police Close In: After nine long months of pursuing a serial rapist that left at least 9 victims in his wake, Prince George's County (MD) police were ready to make an arrest. But Mark Antonio...
A Midsummer Morning's Orders List
Posted on July 28, 2008The Supreme Court issued one of the orders lists that we typically get during the summer between the June adjournment and the October commencement of the next term. As usual, there is nothing too interesting on it. Rehearings are denied...
News Scan
Posted on July 25, 2008'Jessica's Law' Gains Traction in Vermont: The murder of a 12-year-old Vermont girl, Brooke Bennett, has received nationwide attention. Her uncle, a registered sex offender, has been charged in connection with her death. According to this AP article, the revelation...
News Scan
Posted on July 24, 2008Convicted Child Molester Free During Appeals Process: Aaron Mohanlal was convicted of 13 counts related to sexual abuse of a 13-year-old boy that lasted for nearly two years. Although he was sentenced to 43 years in prison, the Broward County,...
Child Rape, the Death Penalty, and the Military
Posted on July 23, 2008Louisiana's rehearing petition in the Supreme Court case continues to prompt much discussion. Our post on the original decision is here. SCOTUSblog has the petition for rehearing here. Doug Berman's latest SL&P post, with a link to the prior one,...
News Scan
Posted on July 23, 2008CA Jessica's Law Nets Conviction, 20-year sentence: California enacted Jessica's Law in 2006, and it seems to be working, according to Niesha Lofing's story for the Sac Bee. The Yolo County District Attorney's Office won a 20-year sentence under Jessica's...
Sequential Lineups
Posted on July 23, 2008Sequential lineups have been touted as inherently superior to simultaneous lineups. A new study indicates that the situation is not quite that simple. (Hat tip: Psychology and Crime News) The article is: Lineup composition, suspect position, and the sequential lineup...
Notable Opinions
Posted on July 22, 2008Here are a couple of noteworthy opinion pieces in the papers: SF Chrontrarian Debra Saunders has a column on the SF "sanctuary" policy noted in today's News Scan. She notes "the concept started as a way of letting otherwise law-abiding...
Blog Scan
Posted on July 22, 2008A Below-Guideline Sentence Unreasonable in Sixth Circuit: At Sentencing Law and Policy, Doug Berman reports a split Sixth Circuit panel reversed "a sentence well below the guidelines as substantively unreasonable." The opinion, U.S. v. Funk, No. 05-3708, was released today...
News Scan
Posted on July 22, 2008"Highly Coerced" Statements Inadmissible at Guantanamo Commission: Osama bin Laden's former driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, received a significant victory in his trial when the judge ruled that prosecutors cannot use some of the defendant's statements, citing coercive conditions in Afghanistan...
Blog Scan
Posted on July 21, 2008Louisiana Seeks Review of Kennedy v. Louisiana: As noted in the News Scan below, Louisiana has moved for rehearing in this case. SCOTUSblog has a post from Lyle Denniston on Louisiana's request. The Petition for Rehearing, was filed late this...
News Scan
Posted on July 21, 2008Only in America does a search and seizure violation automatically result in exclusion of the evidence. Adam Liptak has this story in the NYT. Rehearing Petition in Child Rape Case: Louisiana has filed a rehearing petition in Kennedy v. Louisiana,...
An Astonishing Quote
Posted on July 21, 2008The Los Angeles Daily News has this story by Tony Castro on the penalty verdict in the case of Manuel Alvarez. The jury decided on life without parole for a man who killed 11 people by parking on the train...
Blog Scan
Posted on July 18, 2008Follow Up to Yesterday's Gitmo Case: Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog reports, and provides a link to Judge Roberston's written opinion explaining yesterday's refusal to delay Salim Hamdan's trial. According to Denniston, the memorandum opinion closely follows the oral announcement Judge...
News Scan
Posted on July 18, 2008TX to Proceed with Internationally Contested Executions: The ICJ ordered a review of 5 Texas capital cases after Mexico again complained that the convicts had not been allowed to talk to the Mexican consulate after their arrests. But today, a...
Sentencing Guidelines, Discrimination, and Variance Explained
Posted on July 17, 2008From my stack of post-SCOTUS-term catch-up reading comes this executive summary of a study titled "Assessing Consistency and Fairness in Sentencing: A Comparative Study in Three States." It was released May 22 by the National Center for State Courts. I...
Blog Scan
Posted on July 17, 2008Hamdan's Trial Will Go Forward Next Week: At the BLT, Joe Palazzolo has this post on the denial of Hamdan's request to halt his war crimes trial, noted in today's News Scan. The trial is scheduled for next Monday. After...
News Scan
Posted on July 17, 2008World Court Demands Stay of Execution for Avena Inmates: In 2004, the World Court ruled that the United States had violated the Vienna Convention by not allowing 51 arrested Mexican nationals to contact consular officials after their arrest and by...
Missouri Injection Protocol Upheld
Posted on July 16, 2008In Baze v. Rees, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, "Justice Stevens suggests that our opinion leaves the disposition of other cases uncertain, see post, at 1, but the standard we set forth here resolves more challenges than he acknowledges. A stay...
Safe Neighborhoods Act Website
Posted on July 16, 2008The website for Proposition 6 on California's November ballot, the Safe Neighborhoods Act, is now up. Due to the chronic dysfunction of the California Legislature, it is necessary once again to turn to the initiative process to give public safety...
News Scan
Posted on July 16, 2008Debate Intensifies over New Death Row: Randy Dotinga for the CSM reports death penalty opponents are now opposing a proposal to move some of California's death row inmates to facilities outside San Quentin. Proponents argue San Quentin's intended expansion will...
Circle Sentencing Study
Posted on July 16, 2008From New South Wales, Australia, comes this study on "circle sentencing," an aspect of the "restorative justice" movement (hat tip: SL&P). Here is the abstract: Circle sentencing is an alternative method of sentencing Aboriginal offenders which involves the offender?s community...
Blog Scan
Posted on July 15, 2008Fourth Circuit Upholds Presidential Authority To Detain Foreign Student Living In U.S.: SCOTUSblog posted on today's Fourth Circuit ruling in Al-Marri v. Pucciarelli (06-6427). The decision allows President Bush to detain a foreign student living in the United States, based...
News Scan
Posted on July 15, 2008Friends in Low Places: With the proliferation of the Internet has come a new phenomenon: prisoner blogs and requests for pen pals. The ACLU has championed this as a development for free speech, while victims' rights groups argue that it...
Notes from the Sentencing Commission Symposium
Posted on July 15, 2008The United States Sentencing Commission symposium on alternative sentencing began yesterday and continues today. I participated in a panel yesterday and was able to attend part of that day's sessions. The commission is having the proceedings transcribed by actual court...
Blog Scan
Posted on July 14, 2008D.C's New Handgun Act: Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog reports on D.C's "planned response" to the Supreme Court's ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller. According to Denniston, the proposed "Firearms Control Emergency Act of 2008" will allow handguns to be...
News Scan
Posted on July 14, 2008Parole Process for Killers to Receive Court's Scrutiny: How many years behind bars for a person to atone for murder? Is a spotless prison record proof of rehabilitation? Does age or disability lessen the threat to society? These are some...
Questioning Field Sobriety Tests
Posted on July 14, 2008The latest issue of Law & Human Behavior has an article by psychologist Steven J. Rubenzer titled The Standardized Field Sobriety Tests: A Review of Scientific and Legal Issues (subscription required): This article details the history and development of the...
The Spam King
Posted on July 11, 2008Doug Berman at SL&P solicited comments regarding what sentence is appropriate for the "Spam King." He has gotten a lot of comments, 60 as of this writing. What is fascinating to me is that the commenters on this blog, who...
A Neat, Plausible, & Wrong Answer to the "Too Many Prisoners" Problem
Posted on July 11, 2008The Washington Post has this editorial, titled "Too Many Prisoners." The editorial bemoans the high number of prisoners and the financial burden of the prisons. No dispute there. The editorial also says, "Tough sentences for murder, rape and the like...
Virginia's Lethal Injection Protocol Upheld
Posted on July 10, 2008Hattip to Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy for pointing us to, and providing a link to the Fourth Circuit's decision in Emmett v. Johnson, No. 07-18 (4th Cir. July 10, 2008). As Berman reports, a split panel affirmed...
Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment
Posted on July 10, 2008This press release from the Governor of Maryland announces the names of the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment. Benjamin Civiletti, Attorney General in the Carter Administration, is the chairman. Every study commission in every state to date has been stacked...
News Scan
Posted on July 10, 2008VA Execution Tonight?: Kent Jackson, 26, is set to be executed tonight in Virginia for the brutal beating, rape, and stabbing death of his 79-year-old neighbor. The case is particularly unique because Jackson was sentenced to death just five years...
Jesse Jackson and Personal Responsibility
Posted on July 10, 2008On the ChiTrib's "Exploring Race" blog, Dawn Turner Trice has this post on the Jesse Jackson - Barack Obama flap. (The video is here, if you haven't seen it.) What caught my eye was this excerpt from Jackson's apology/explanation: "My...
News Scan
Posted on July 09, 2008Gunfire Sensors and Video Cameras Facilitate Policing: The ShotSpotter network, technology that identifies the location of gunshots to within 10 feet, has been in place in several major cities across the country to help police in high crime areas where...
New Mitigation "Guidelines"
Posted on July 09, 2008Hofstra Law Review has an entire issue on the "Supplementary Guidelines for the Mitigation Function of Defense Teams In Death Penalty Cases." (Hat tip: SL&P.) Unlike the American Bar Association, which at least pretends to represent the entire bar, these...
News Scan
Posted on July 08, 2008Cold-blooded Killers Will Kill Again: Wil Haygood's two-part article for the WA Post describes in detail the hunt for Randall Smith who killed two hikers on the Appalachian Trail in 1981. He spent just 15 years in prison before he...
A Generational Change in Academia?
Posted on July 07, 2008This NYT article by Patricia Cohen claims that there is a generational change in academia. (Hat tip: Orin Kerr at VC.) "Baby boomers, hired in large numbers during a huge expansion in higher education that continued into the ?70s, are...
FedSoc Commentary
Posted on July 07, 2008Issue 9.2 of Engage, the journal of the Federalist Society's practice groups, is now available online. This issue has four criminal law articles, because the Federalism group's articles are both on criminal law topics. The articles are: From Apprendi to...
News Scan
Posted on July 07, 2008Former Critic Says "Three Strikes" Success Difficult to Dispute: Debra Saunders voted "no" on the "Three Strikes" initiative in 1994. But in an article for the San Francisco Chronicle, she says she was wrong for believing that the majority of...
Blog Scan
Posted on July 07, 2008Filling A Supreme Court Vacancy: Over at Convictions, Doug Kmiec posted his thoughts on who the next President should appoint to the U.S. Supreme Court. Kmiec's post begins with comments on why each of the candidates, McCain in particular, have...
News Scan
Posted on July 03, 2008In Rare Admission, Justice Dept. Accepts Responsibility for Kennedy Error: According to Linda Greenhouse's follow-up for the NY Times, the Justice Department has admitted that government attorneys should have known about the change to military law which permitted the death...
News Scan
Posted on July 02, 2008Factual Error in Kennedy Decision: Reporting for the NY Times, Linda Greenhouse examines the potential impact of the Kennedy ruling that the death penalty is not a suitable punishment for child rape in light of the fact that the justices...
Blog Scan
Posted on July 02, 2008Today's New York Times Kennedy Article: Matthew Franck at Bench Memos has a post discussing why Linda Greenhouse's article on Kennedy made the front page of the New York Times today. The article, summarized in our News Scan, can be...
Blog Scan
Posted on July 01, 2008Post-Heller Second Amendment Lawsuits: Lyle Denniston reports over at SCOTUSblog on the five Second Amendment lawsuits filed by the NRA last Friday, June 27, 2008. The lawsuits attack the constitutionality of gun control laws adopted in California and Illinois...
News Scan
Posted on July 01, 2008Guantanamo Detainee Charged in USS Cole Bombing: Almost 8 years after a small boat loaded with TNT detonated and ripped through the USS Cole at a Yemeni port, Guantanamo Bay detainee Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri has been charged for planning...
Florida to Resume Executions
Posted on July 01, 2008Update: The execution was carried out on schedule and completed at 6:15 EDT. AP story here. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Florida executions are scheduled to resume today following a de facto moratorium for the revision of procedures following the Diaz execution and the...
Blog Scan
Posted on June 30, 2008Supreme Court Criminal Law Docket in 2007-2008: Kristina Moore at SCOTUSblog posted a summary of the criminal cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court this term. Moore reports that of the 24 cases involving criminal law, 12 involved sentencing guidelines...
Hubris on Deterrence
Posted on June 30, 2008Cass Sunstein and Justin Wolfers have this op-ed in the Washington Post today, claiming that the Supreme Court has "misread" the evidence on deterrence. Professor Sunstein gives himself too much credit and gives Justice Scalia too little....
News Scan
Posted on June 30, 2008Death Penalty Opponents Vow More Lawsuits in Wake of Baze: While the Baze decision provides a fairly clear affirmation of the procedures used by Kentucky and 34 other states, Deborah Hastings of the Associated Press argues that death penalty opponents...
Dubious California Death Penalty Report Due Today
Posted on June 30, 2008The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice plans to release its report on the death penalty today. The press release is here. The circumstances of this commission's creation and its actions to date do not bode well for...
Death Penalty Debate Online
Posted on June 27, 2008The Federalist Society has this online debate on the death penalty. "In light of the important death penalty questions considered [by the Supreme Court] this term, a panel of experts-- Former Chief of the Appellate Division in the U.S. Attorney's...
USCA2 Upholds Death Sentence
Posted on June 27, 2008The Second Circuit doesn't decide a lot of death penalty cases. Vermont has decided not to have the death penalty through the democratic process. New York's was nullified by Their Imperial Highnesses at the NY Court of Appeals. Connecticut cases...
News Scan
Posted on June 27, 2008SF Widow Pleads for Death Penalty: A week ago, Danielle Bologna of San Francisco was living with her husband and four children. Then suddenly half her family was gone, reports Jaxon Van Derbeken in the SF Chron. They were killed...
Knowles v. Mirzayance
Posted on June 27, 2008You know something unusual is up when the three-judge panel of a U.S. Court of Appeals decides that a case is so mundane that it is not worth a published opinion, but the U.S. Supreme Court considers the case "certworthy,"...
The Complexity of Brain Scans
Posted on June 26, 2008The purported rise of brain scanning technologies in criminal cases has paralleled the growth of neurolaw within legal scholarship. But as with many new interfaces with law, the tendency to overplay the implications such technologies have regarding entrenched legal norms...
Interpretation Nuggets in Heller
Posted on June 26, 2008When reading Supreme Court opinions, I like to keep track of "nuggets," particularly nice statements of basic principles that may be useful in other contexts. The Heller opinion has a number of nuggets on the interpretation of enactments, applicable both...
More Apprendi Damage Control
Posted on June 26, 2008The California Supreme Court decided People v. Towne, S125677, today, further squashing the notion that the Apprendi line of cases requires juries to decide practically everything relevant to sentencing. We conclude the aggravating circumstance that a defendant served a prior...
News Scan
Posted on June 26, 2008Affirmation of Right to Face Accusers May Endanger Victims: Carrie Johnson reports for the Washington Post that the US Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of a man for murdering his ex-girlfriend because he could not challenge a statement she...
Right to Bear Arms
Posted on June 26, 2008The U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed that the Second Amendment right to bear arms creates an individual right, not limited to the militia. The D.C. Circuit ruling in Heller is affirmed. Update: The opinion is available on SCOTUSblog and downloads...
Obama on Kennedy v. Louisiana
Posted on June 25, 2008This being an election year, the ink was not dry on the opinion in Kennedy v. Louisiana before bloggers (and blog commenters) were asking how it would affect the presidential election and whether it would give a boost to John...
Blog Scan
Posted on June 25, 2008Thursday, The Last Day of the 2007 Term: Tony Mauro at Blog of the Legal Times (BLT) has a post on what will happen tomorrow, Thursday, June 26, when the U.S. Supreme Court releases all remaining cases that are "ready"...
Confrontation and the Murdered Witness
Posted on June 25, 2008Although most of the attention today is on the Kennedy opinion, the case of Giles v. California will have a greater impact on the regular practice of criminal law. The case continues the reworking of the Confrontation Clause begun by...
Cunningham Sequel Tomorrow
Posted on June 25, 2008Tomorrow, the California Supreme Court will announce its decision in People v. Towne, S125677. This case is another sequel to Cunningham v. California, 549 U.S. 270 (2007), the case that applied the rule of Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S....
News Scan
Posted on June 25, 2008Ninth Circuit Overturns Death Penalty, Allows Conviction to Stand: Paul Elias reports for the Associated Press that the Reinhart court has ruled that the defense's failure to investigate blood evidence that did not belong to either the defendant or the...
Death Penalty Barred for Child Rape
Posted on June 25, 2008The Supreme Court this morning decided in Kennedy v. Louisiana that the death penalty is unconstitutional for the crime of the rape of a child. The primary reason for the holding is the national consensus the Court found in state...
Jessica's Law in Massachusetts
Posted on June 24, 2008The Massachusetts legislature is presently considering a version of "Jessica's Law," reports Dave Wedge for the Boston Herald. (Hat tip, James Taranto.) Incredibly, the House removed a provision for mandatory prison time for rape of a child before passing the...
News Scan
Posted on June 24, 2008Supreme Court Grants 3rd Hearing to TN Death Row Inmate: According to Adam Liptak's article in the New York Times, the US Supreme Court has granted a third hearing to Gary B. Cone, who was sentenced to death for double...
A Precursor to Oregon v. Ice
Posted on June 24, 2008Hat tip to Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy for the post directing us to today's Supreme Court of Tennessee decision in State v. Allen, No. W2005-0285-SC-R11-CD. The decision, authored by Judge Cornelia Clark, addressed whether Tennessee's consecutive...
Blog Scan
Posted on June 23, 2008The Remaining Supreme Court Decisions: Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSblog posted his predictions for the 2007-2008 cases that are still unresolved. Based on his SCOTUS sudoku method, Goldstein predicts Justice Scalia is the author of District of Columbia v. Heller, indicating...
Crime and the Election
Posted on June 23, 2008More Prisoners, Less Crime: George Will has this column in Sunday's WashPost on the conspicuous absence of crime from the current political campaign. "Listening to political talk requires a third ear that hears what is not said. Today's near silence....
News Scan
Posted on June 23, 2008"Enemy Combatant" Classification Overturned: The Associated Press article at Fox News details the new Federal Appeals Court decision which overturned an American citizen's classification as an enemy combatant. The decision, reached Friday, is not currently available to the public because...
GVR on Collateral Review Waivers
Posted on June 23, 2008In two cases today, the Supreme Court issued grant-vacate-and-remand orders (GVR), directing the Seventh Circuit to take another look based on a new position by the Solicitor General regarding the scope of review waivers in plea agreements. The cases are...
A Narrow, Almost Vanishing, Opinion on Counsel
Posted on June 23, 2008Understatement of the day award goes to Justice David Souter, writing for the Court in Rothgery v. Gillespie County, Texas, No. 07-440. "Our holding is narrow." Indeed, the holding decides an easy technical question but resolves nothing of consequence...
Certiorari Grants
Posted on June 23, 2008The U.S. Supreme Court accepted three criminal and habeas cases for review next term. We previously noted Cone v. Bell, No. 07-1114 on procedural default and Harbison v. Bell, No. 07-8521 on federally funded counsel for state clemency petitions. Also...
Blog Scan
Posted on June 20, 2008Predictions of Kennedy v. Louisiana: Yesterday, Corey Rayburn Yung posted his prediction for the Supreme Court's decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana. In his post, Yung states that while he had earlier predicted that the Court might strike down Louisiana's law...
A Rehnquist Ode
Posted on June 20, 2008Prof. John Q. Barrett, who authors the emailed Jackson List on things relating to Justice Robert Jackson, has an article in the Green Bag on a Gilbert and Sullivan spoof written by Jackson clerk William Rehnquist. The article is here,...
News Scan
Posted on June 20, 2008Texas Courts Accused of "Facilitating" Executions: Steve Mills reports for the Chicago Tribune that a judge's decision to reinstate an inmate's death warrant drew charges from death penalty opponents that the court was behaving "as if their job is to...
News Scan
Posted on June 19, 2008New Poll Shows European Support for Death Penalty Despite EU Ban: Despite the fact that the European Union requires entrants to ban the death penalty, a recent poll taken in the Czech Republic shows that Czech support for the ultimate...
Degrees of Mental Competence
Posted on June 19, 2008Today's Supreme Court opinion in Indiana v. Edwards is available on the Court's website. The case deals with the issue of the marginally competent defendant who is mentally able to stand trial but not to represent himself, yet he insists...
News Scan
Posted on June 18, 2008115,000 Florida Ex-Felons Have Rights Restored: When ex-convicts in Florida wanted their civil rights restored, they used to have to petition the Board of Executive Clemency and undergo an individual hearing to determine whether or not the request should be...
The Criminal Vote
Posted on June 18, 2008Virginia's Democratic Governor Tim Kaine is expediting the process to restore the voting rights of convicted felons before the November election, reports Tim Craig of AP. Query for law-abiding people: The fact that the Democratic Party expects the criminal vote...
Blog Scan
Posted on June 18, 2008DOJ Recommends Habeas Proceedings: Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog has a post on the Justice Department's recommendation to the D.C. Circuit to put the appeals of 190 detainees on hold, so that the detainees may go forward with their habeas claims...
Texas Execution Postponed; Oklahoma Goes Forward
Posted on June 17, 2008The state trial judge has withdrawn the execution warrant in the controversial case of Charles Dean Hood. AP story by Michael Graczyk is here. -------------------------------------------------------- Thirteen years ago, Japanese exchange student Ken Yamamoto was burned to death in his Oklahoma...
Lab Techs and Confrontation
Posted on June 17, 2008Via SCOTUSblog, here is the brief for the petitioner in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, No. 07-591, on the Confrontation Clause and lab tech reports. My impression at this point is that the state has a seriously uphill battle here. We should...
Blog Scan
Posted on June 17, 2008Boumediene Backlash: Over at Bench Memos, Ed Whalen offers a critique of Washington Post writer, George F. Will's attack of McCain's comment that Boumediene was "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.? Whalen's post discusses the....
News Scan
Posted on June 17, 2008Mexico Adopts Reform Modeled on US System: Long criticized for a harsh judicial system that was prone to human rights abuses, Mexico has embraced reforms based on the US judicial system, includig public trials and a presumption of innocence until...
Worth 1000 Words
Posted on June 16, 2008Last week we noted the coverage on the decision of Judge James Burge of Ohio on that state's use of the three-drug protocol for lethal injection. However, we somehow overlooked this AP photograph of Judge Burge by Tony Dejak....
Taking The Importance of Words Too Far
Posted on June 16, 2008Hattip to BLT for its link to Tresa Baldas article in The National Law Journal, "Courts Putting Hot-Button Words on Ice." The article reports on the success of the defense bar in convincing trial judges to ban prosecutors and...
Today's Orders
Posted on June 16, 2008Two habeas cases of note were denied certiorari today, and two were conspicuously absent from the orders list. In Quarterman v. Chambers, No. 07-1329, the court denied review of a Fifth Circuit decision overturning the sentence Ronald Chambers, who has...
New Zealand Sentencing
Posted on June 16, 2008"Yesterday, the Sensible Sentencing Trust joined families of victims outside Auckland's Mt Eden Prison and staged a demonstration for tougher parole laws," reports Greer McDonald for the Dominion Post. (Hat tip: SL&P.) On the same site, another story reports that...
News Scan
Posted on June 16, 2008Ninth Circuit Strikes Again: As we posted last Friday, the Ninth Circuit has overturned murderer Fernando Belmonte's death sentence for a third time. Bob Egelko reports for the San Francisco Chronicle on this ruling. Creative Use of Internet Assists Investigations:...
Viewing SCOTUS Through a Partisan Glass, Part II
Posted on June 16, 2008Dahlia Lithwick has this op-ed in the WashPost puzzling over the nonideological lineups this term: Court watchers have stood dumbfounded all spring as the high court rejected and renounced the 5 to 4 conservative-liberal splits that seemed to have calcified...
Habeas Corpus: GITMO Style
Posted on June 16, 2008The Commonwealth Club of San Francisco has a program this Thursday evening with the above title. The speakers are CJLF's Legal Director Kent Scheidegger and Center for Constitutional Rights Executive Director Vincent Warren. Bob Egelko of the San Francisco Chronicle...
Cert. Grants
Posted on June 16, 2008The Supreme Court granted certiorari in three civil cases today, SCOTUSblog reports. Two are law-enforcement related. One is Ashcroft v. Iqbal, No. 07-1015 on post-9/11 suits against high DoJ officials. The other is Haywood v. Drown on state court jurisdiction...
Ignoring History in the Gitmo Case
Posted on June 13, 2008My "initial thoughts" post on the Boumediene decision noted that the Court gave short shrift to the historical point regarding habeas and military prisoners with no prior connection to the country. I will expand on that point a bit here....
Belmontes on Remand
Posted on June 13, 2008The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has demonstrated once again why it simply cannot be trusted to decide capital cases fairly. The Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit in the case of Ayers v. Belmontes in 2006...
News Scan
Posted on June 13, 2008Arms Trafficker Extradited to NY for Trial: Tom Hays reports for the Associated Press that Spain gave final approval for the extradition of a wealthy arms trafficker to face trial on charges related to funneling arms to revolutionary Colombian forces...
Nigeria: In Defence of Death Penalty
Posted on June 13, 2008From the Daily Trust of Abuja, Nigeria, comes this excellent piece by Adamu Adamu with the above title. Adamu addresses many of the same topics that are debated in the United States: deterrence, retribution, and especially the "we have to...
Blog Scan
Posted on June 12, 2008Habeas Rights After Boumediene and Al Odah: As expected, the blogosphere was saturated with posts and comments on today's Boumediene and Al Odah decision. Lyle Denniston has a post on SCOTUSblog analyzing detainee rights now that they have been granted...
News Scan
Posted on June 12, 2008Habeas Corpus Extends to Military Prisoners?: Despite CJLF's research that the Great Writ did not extend to military prisoners under common law, the Supreme Court ruled today that Guantanamo detainees have the right to challenge their detention in civilian court...
Initial Thoughts on the Gitmo Case
Posted on June 12, 2008The good news is that all the people who have been squawking about the "ultraconservative" Supreme Court look pretty foolish this morning. A quick scan of the Boumediene opinion indicates that most of it is refuting the government's theory that...
Blog Scan
Posted on June 11, 2008Ohio Trial Court's Lethal Injection Decision: Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy posted today on the Catch-22 of lethal injection reform in the United States. In his post, Berman discusses a press release from a "team of medical, ethical,...
News Scan
Posted on June 11, 2008Ohio Judge Orders New Execution Method: Adam Liptak and Adam B. Ellick report for the New York Times that Judge Burge of Ohio has ordered a change in Ohio's execution protocol. Despite the Supreme Court's decision in Baze v. Rees,...
The O'Connor Precedents
Posted on June 11, 2008As noted in yesterday’s Blog Scan, there is much discussion about which of the cases where Justice O’Connor cast the deciding vote might be overruled following her replacement by a more “conservative” justice. I put “conservative” in quotes because such...
Blog Scan
Posted on June 10, 2008O'Connor's Supreme Court Precedents: Marty Lederman has a post at Balkinization discussing the "five high-profile constitutional areas" where O'Connor's precedents are vulnerable to being overruled by the current U.S. Supreme Court. The five areas include abortion, "race conscious assignments and...
News Scan
Posted on June 10, 2008Texas to Resume Executions Following Nationwide Pause: The Associated Press reports that, on Monday, the highest court in Texas turned aside an appeal to challenge the constitutionality of Texas's lethal injection procedures, allowing plans to move forward to execute Karl...
Who Is In Our State Prisons?
Posted on June 09, 2008From the office of California State Senator George Runner comes this report, refuting some of the myths about the state's prison population. Everybody "knows" that our prison population per capita has exploded in the last ten years. No, actually, it....
News Scan
Posted on June 09, 2008Crime Down in 2007: Preliminary figures reported by the FBI indicate that crime was down nationally in 2007. An Associated Press story by Michael J. Sniffen reports that violent crime declined by 1.4% and property crimes dropped by 2.3% last...
No Crim Opinions from SCOTUS Today
Posted on June 09, 2008SCOTUSblog reports that the Supreme Court has issued four opinions today, all in civil cases. The Court also granted certiorari in two civil cases. Next opinion day is Thursday. Two habeas cases were on SCOTUSblog's "petitions to watch" list for...
SCOTUS Schedule Shift
Posted on June 06, 2008In an effort to decide more cases early in the term and fewer in June, the Supreme Court will hear three cases a day, rather than two, during the October and November argument sessions. Chief Justice Roberts acknowledged that this...
Blog Scan
Posted on June 06, 2008Increasing Prison Population: Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy has a post clarifying an ABC News Report that the "U.S. Prison Population Hits All-Time High". Berman clarifies the ABC story by linking to the the Justice Department's official press...
Blog Scan
Posted on June 05, 2008Did the State Expressly Waive Exhaustion Defense to a Brady Claim?: Jonathan Adler at Volokh Conspiracy has this post on today's Sixth Circuit decision in D?Ambrosio v. Bagley. In the opinion, a divided three judge panel split over when in...
Blog Scan
Posted on June 04, 2008Commentary on The Roberts Court: Jonathan Adler has this post reflecting on a plenary panel discussion he attended at the AALS Mid-Year Conference. The panel focused on ?The Changing Roberts Court?, and was Moderated by Lori Ringhand (UGeorgia). The panel...
News Scan
Posted on June 04, 2008Virginia Spam: The Virginia Supreme Court reheard the First Amendment issues in the case of prolific spammer Jeremy Jaynes, reports Larry O'Dell for AP. Prior opinion here; rehearing order here. Guantanamo Is a Model Prison (Really): Admiral Mark Buzby refutes...
Research Notes
Posted on June 02, 2008Fingerprint Breakthrough? "Forensic scientists at the University of Leicester, working with Northamptonshire Police, have announced a major breakthrough in crime detection which could lead to hundreds of cold cases being reopened," reports Science Daily...
Blog Scan
Posted on June 02, 2008New Solicitor General: The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog posted today that President Bush intends to nominate Gregory Garre to replace Paul Clement as Solicitor General. Garre currently serves as Principal Deputy Solicitor General in the Office of the Solicitor...
Money Laundering, Lenity, GAAP, and the Narrowest Grounds
Posted on June 02, 2008Understatement of the day award goes to Justice Samuel Alito: "There are no generally accepted accounting principles for determining the net income of illegal enterprises...." United States v. Santos, No. 06-1005 (today) (dissent). The splintered opinion involves more interesting issues...
Blog Scan
Posted on May 30, 2008Justice Scalia's interviews with WSJ Law Blog: Dan Slater at the Wall Street Journal Law Blog posted on his interview with Justice Scalia today. All three parts relate to Justice Scalia's new book ?Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading...
News Scan
Posted on May 30, 2008Escaped Inmate Caught After 43 Years: Associated Press reporter Brian Witte writes that Maryland police have captured convicted armed robber Willie ?Pops? Parker, who escaped from Maryland?s Eastern Correctional Camp in 1965. Parker, who is now 81, was tracked down...
News Scan
Posted on May 29, 2008Former Illinois Governor George Ryan, who is serving a 6.5 year prison sentence for racketeering and corruption, lost his bid for a Supreme Court appeal Tuesday as reported by Chicago Tribune writer Mary Owen. Ryan, who became the darling of...
Blog Scan
Posted on May 29, 2008Forensic Evidence in Criminal Trials: David Bernstein at Volokh Conspiracy posted some comments on the use of forensic evidence in criminal trials and Federal Rule of Evidence (FRE) 702. Bernstein discusses how expert witness testimony is supported by "Political Liberals"...
Blog Scan
Posted on May 28, 2008More Commentary on Giles: In an article posted on FindLaw's Writ, Sherry F. Colb discusses Giles v. California, a case argued before the Supreme Court in April. Giles addresses whether the "forfeiture by wrongdoing" clause allows testimonial statements to be...
SCOTUScast on United States v. Williams
Posted on May 28, 2008The Federalist Society has a SCOTUS podcast on the U.S. Supreme Court's May 19, 2008 decision in United States v. Williams. The SCOTUScast features commentary by Elizabeth Harmer Dionne, the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Harvard Law School....
Virginia Execution
Posted on May 28, 2008Jerry Markon at the Washington Post has this up to date story on Virginia's execution of Kevin Green. Green was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection last night at 9 p.m. EDT in Virginia. He was pronounced dead at...
Viewing SCOTUS Through a Partisan Glass, Darkly
Posted on May 27, 2008Linda Greenhouse has this article in Friday's New York Times, asking, "Where have all the 5-to-4 decisions gone?" Her approach is to look at the court entirely on a simple, one-dimensional liberal v. conservative scale, as if there is nothing...
Blog Scan
Posted on May 27, 2008Obama's Judicial Philosophy Analyzed: Jennifer Rubin at Pajamas Media has this post analyzing the potential results of Obama's judicial appointments based on his comments to the media on specific issues. Rubin is quick to point out that Obama claims his...
Death Penalty Links
Posted on May 27, 2008Steve Stewart, prosecuting attorney of Clark County, Indiana, has updated his extensive collection of links on the death penalty. Check it out....
SCOTUS Today
Posted on May 27, 2008No opinions in criminal cases were issued today. The Court did not take any new cases, criminal or civil, in its orders list. (Yawn.) Among the cases denied certiorari is Warner v. United States, No. 07-977. The codefendant on this...
News Scan
Posted on May 23, 2008Maryland Death Penalty: Responding to calls by prosecutors and GOP legislators, Governor Martin O'Malley has reluctantly ordered the Maryland Department of Public Safety to review the state's lethal injection protocol and submit the recommended procedure to a legislative panel for...
News Scan
Posted on May 22, 2008Murder Conviction Overturned: The Illinois Supreme Court has unanimously overturned the murder conviction and prison sentence of a Rockford man convicted of killing his girlfriend in 1993. A story in the Rockford Register Star by Aaron Chambers reports that the...
Stay Denied in Berry Case
Posted on May 21, 2008Update: Berry was executed at 6:15 p.m. CDT, AP reports. That is 20 years and 6 months after he kidnapped Mary Bounds and beat her to death, far too long. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Supreme Court has denied stays in the two...
Blog Scan
Posted on May 21, 2008Effect of Blakely in Ohio: Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy posted on the Ohio Supreme Court's decision in State v. Hairston, No. 2008-Ohio-2338 (Ohio May 21, 2008). The decision upheld a 134 year prison sentence for a man...
Program on Obstruction of Justice
Posted on May 21, 2008May 29 event in DC by the Federalist Society and its Criminal Law and Procedure Practice Group: Every few months, a highly visible public figure or government official becomes embroiled in a criminal investigation that ultimately includes obstruction of justice...
Brain Scams
Posted on May 21, 2008Daniel Carlat over at the Carlat Psychiatry Report has a post titled "Brain Scams: The Marketing of Functional Neuroimaging" discussing his recent article in Wired on the subject: Functional neuroimaging has great promise for elucidating the neurocircuitry of psychiatric disorders,...
Neuropsychology in New Hampshire
Posted on May 21, 2008The Supreme Court of New Hampshire issued an opinion in the case of Baxter v. Temple (#2007-102) yesterday involving the admissibility of the Boston Process Approach (BPA) of neuropsychological assessment. In brief, the BPA is a widely used assessment approach...
Blog Scan
Posted on May 20, 2008Death Penalty Appeal to the Supreme Court: Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog posted on Earl Wesley Berry's recent petitions to the U.S. Supreme Court. Berry had petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of execution back in April, our posts...
Possible Settlement of Cal. Prison Case
Posted on May 20, 2008A tentative settlement has been reached in the California prison overcrowding case. The deal would avoid early releases by reducing the population over time through fewer returns for parole violations. Michael Rothfeld has this story in the LA Times. Fewer...
Blog Scan
Posted on May 19, 2008More on McCain's Judicial Policy: Dan Slater at Wall Street Journal's Law Blog has this his post discussing Jeffrey Toobin's article in this week's New Yorker. Many of you may recall Toobin is the author of last year's The Nine,...
Judicial Activism, the Election, and the Gay Marriage Case
Posted on May 19, 2008Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac U. Polling Institute has this post on the WSJ Political Perceptions blog regarding the impact of the California gay marriage case on the presidential election. By overturning a ban on gay marriage that was approved...
Recidivism Compounding
Posted on May 19, 2008Compound interest is a very powerful force in finance. (Whether Albert Einstein really declared it to be the most powerful force in the universe is undetermined.) But if you choose crime as your career instead, you may run into a...
Emmett Stay Lifted
Posted on May 19, 2008The Supreme Court lifted the stay of execution previously issued in the case of Virginia murderer Christopher Emmett. Previous posts on this case are here, here, and here. Justice Stevens dissented from today's lifting of the stay, joined by Justices...
One Terrorist Case Down
Posted on May 19, 2008The United States Supreme Court issued three decisions in criminal cases today. This post describes one of them. Although the Gitmo habeas case remains pending, the high court did decide the case of another terrorist, Ahmed Ressam. He falsely stated....
News Scan
Posted on May 16, 2008Flag burning is still a crime, notwithstanding Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989), if the perpetrator sneaks around in the wee hours burning other people's flags. Lindsey Baguio has this story in the Orange County (Cal.) Register. See Cal....
Cross-Examining Lab Techs
Posted on May 16, 2008The Ninth Circuit today issued an interesting, if quirky, opinion on the issue of the right to cross-examine lab technicians in United States v. Perez, No. 07-10289. The issue arose in the context of supervised release revocation, not criminal trial,...
Misconduct Complaining About Misconduct
Posted on May 14, 2008Here is an interesting ruling from Chief Judge Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit. An attorney filed a misconduct complaint against a district judge and a magistrate judge. The complaint was such total tripe that the attorney is now ordered to...
Injection Litigation
Posted on May 14, 2008Post-Baze mopping-up operations are reported in this AP article by Larry O'Dell and Randall Chase. The Fourth Circuit held oral argument today in the Emmett case. In Richmond, attorneys for Emmett and the state told a three-judge panel of the...
Blog Scan
Posted on May 14, 2008Ed Whalen Comments on Ronald Dworkin's New Book: Over at Bench Memos, Ed Whalen has this post commenting on the first few chapters of Ronald Dworkin's new book, The Supreme Court Phalanx: The Court?s New Right-Wing Bloc. The book republishes...
Resignation Day
Posted on May 14, 2008The Attorney General of Ohio, Marc Dann, has resigned, under very different circumstances from those of SG Clement, noted below. Laura Bischoff has this story for the Oxford Press....
Clement Resignation
Posted on May 14, 2008Solicitor General Paul Clement is resigning June 2. WSJ Law Blog has this post. SCOTUSblog has the text of the press release, not yet on the DoJ site....
Blog Scan
Posted on May 13, 2008Monday's Decisions from the Ninth Circuit: Jon Sands at Ninth Circuit Blog posted a summary of the Ninth Circuit's decisions in U.S. v. Caruto, Woods v. Carey, and Miller v. Blackletter. Defendant's rights appeared to be the theme of the...
News Scan
Posted on May 13, 2008Fast Track DP in Utah? The Utah legislature is considering putting a constitutional amendment on the 2010 ballot that would shorten post conviction review of death penalty cases. The measure, which has been proposed by the Attorney General, would set...
Prosecutor Recusal in California
Posted on May 12, 2008California Supreme Court's decision in Humberto S. was not the only prosecutor recusal opinion issued by the California Supreme Court today. Today, the court also decided Hollywood v. Superior Court and Haraguchi v. Superior Court....
Prosecutors and Victims' Privileged Info.
Posted on May 12, 2008The California Supreme Court today issued a decision regarding the proper role of prosecutors when the defense attempts to access information protected by a privilege held by the victim. In a child molestation case, the trial court recused a large...
SCOTUS Monday
Posted on May 12, 2008No decision yet in the Guantanamo detainee case, Boumediene v. Bush. Be sure to tune in next week, same time, same channel. The Court decided Gonzalez v. United States on the (yawn) question of whether consent to having the jury...
News Scan
Posted on May 09, 2008Marco Allen Chapman, a death row inmate in Kentucky, may soon get his wish: to die. Chapman will be the first person executed in Kentucky since 1999. Brett Barrouquere, from the San Francisco Chronicle, reports Chapman has waited more than...
Blog Scan
Posted on May 09, 2008Bismullah To Get Status Review: Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog reported today that the Pentagon intends to review the status of Bismullah, an Afghan national detained at Guantanamo Bay. Bismullah's lawyers have argued for months that he has been detained by...
Blog Scan
Posted on May 08, 2008Takings Clause and Foreigners: Thanks to Eugene Volokh at Volokh Conspiracy for his post on the Federal Circuit opinion dismissing a claim that the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause applied to foreign nationals with no relationship to the United States...
News Scan
Posted on May 07, 2008Ohio Murderer May Finally Face Execution Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Maggi Martin writes that, after 21 years of appeals, double-murderer Richard Cooey may soon receive his sentence. Cooey was sentenced to die on December 1986 for the rape and murder...
The Lynd Case
Posted on May 06, 2008More breaking news on the possible first post-Baze execution. Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog has this post, with the pleadings, on Georgia murderer William Lynd's certiorari petition and request for stay to the U.S. Supreme Court. The state's opposition notes that...
Senator McCain Explains His Judical Philosophy
Posted on May 06, 2008Hat-tip to Paul Cassell at the Volokh Conspiracy for the link to the text of Senator McCain's speech on his judicial appointment philosophy. The speech was given today at Wake Forest University and outlines McCain's conservative philosophy of appointing qualified judges to positions in the federal courts...
News Scan
Posted on May 06, 2008Georgia Murderer Faces Execution: William Earl Lynd, sentenced to death 18 years ago for the kidnap and murder of his ex-girlfriend, is scheduled for execution tonight as reported in this story by AP writer Shannon McCaffrey. Lynd will be the...
USDC San Diego Bombed
Posted on May 05, 2008The federal courthouse in San Diego was hit by a bomb about 1:40 a.m. Sunday. Angelica Martinez has this story in the San Diego Union-Tribune....
Blog Scan
Posted on May 05, 2008Medellin Execution Date Set: The Blog of Legal Times has this post on the decision to set Jose Medellin's execution for August 5, 2008. In March 2008, the Supreme Court ruled that an International Court of Justice judgment was not...
News Scan
Posted on May 05, 2008Civil Rights Pioneer Mildred Loving, a black woman who challenged Virginia?s ban in interracial marriage, died Friday in her home. On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court upheld Mildred and Richard Loving?s right to marry. Washington Post writer Dionne Walker...
"Exonerated," Not Necessarily Innocent
Posted on May 05, 2008The anti-DP crowd is crowing over another "exoneration," once again obscuring the distinction between inability to reprosecute and actual proof (or even evidence) of actual innocence. DPIC, for example, has this description of the case of Levon Jones in North...
Sowell on Obama
Posted on May 04, 2008Thomas Sowell has this column on Barack Obama, noting that eagerness to have a black President is not a good reason to elect this particular person as President: Just the power to nominate federal judges to trial courts and appellate...
DNA Cold Hits
Posted on May 04, 2008"DNA matches aren't always a lock" is the headline of this LA Times story by Jason Felch and Maura Dolan. Cases where a suspect is identified by a "cold hit" database search involve different probability considerations than the typical case...
Blog Scan
Posted on May 02, 2008The Constitution and Judicial Supremacy: At Bench Memos Ed Whelan and Matthew J. Franck have two posts on the Senate resolution that declared John McCain a "natural born" citizen under Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United...
News Scan
Posted on May 02, 2008Justice Resumed?: Bill Mears at CNN has this story on post-Baze executions scheduled in Georgia and Mississippi next week. Intelligent Life at a College Newspaper An editorial in San Diego State University's paper, The Daily Aztec, suggests that "America's tough...
Blog Scan
Posted on May 01, 2008Federal Sentencing at the Ninth Circuit: Douglas Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy posted his thoughts on today's Ninth Circuit sentencing decision in Tapia-Romero, No. 05-50121 (9th Cir. May 1, 2008). Berman's commentary questions whether the Ninth Circuit was correct...
News Scan
Posted on April 30, 2008A Shift on The Supreme Court. L.A.Times writer David Savage suggests that the Supreme Court has changed its approach in deciding constitutional questions. The piece compares previous courts that were ?willing to strike down laws before they went into effect,?...
Blog Scan
Posted on April 30, 2008Thoughts on the oral arguments in Kennedy v. Louisiana: Sherry Colb at FindLaw posted an article today reporting the the U.S. Supreme Court's oral arguments in Kennedy v. Louisiana. The article takes specific notice of Justice Ginsburg and Chief Justice...
Blog Scan
Posted on April 29, 2008Comparison of Crawford and McConnell v. FEC: Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy had an interesting post today. Kerr compares the U.S. Supreme's decision in yesterday's Crawford v. Marion County Election Board with its 2003 decision in McConnell v. FEC,...
Ventura FedSoc Program
Posted on April 29, 2008Tomorrow evening (Wednesday), the Gold Coast Chapter of the Federalist Society (Ventura County, CA) will have a program on "Murderers, Terrorists & Treaties: Current Supreme Court Cases on the Treatment of Aliens," discussing the Guantanamo cases and Medellin...
News Scan
Posted on April 29, 2008DP Challenge Rejected: A Superior Court Judge in Delaware has dismissed a lawsuit challenging the state's lethal injection protocol. A story by AP writer Randall Chase reports that Robert Jackson's suit claimed that the state's protocol were illegally established because...
Blog Scan
Posted on April 28, 2008Scalia on 60 Minutes: The Corner at National Review Online has a link to transcripts of Justice Scalia's interview with Lesley Stahl from 60 minutes. The interview aired last night on CBS. Gerard Bradley at Bench Memos also has this...
News Scan
Posted on April 28, 2008Train Crash Could Result in Death Penalty. On the morning of January 26, 2005, Juan Miguel Alvarez parked his jeep on the Los Angeles Metrolink tracks about 1/2 mile from downtown Glendale. As a train full of commuters approached, Alvarez...
SCOTUS Monday
Posted on April 28, 2008The Supreme Court reminded us in Crawford of the importance of cross-examination as an engine for the discovery of the truth. No, I'm not referring to Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004) but to today's decision in the voter...
News Scan
Posted on April 25, 2008Is War on Terror a Crime? According to Rivkin and Casey in the Wall Street Journal, law professors, activist lawyers, and pundits are accusing the attorneys who have advised the President on the war on terror of aiding and abetting...
Journalists' Shield Law
Posted on April 25, 2008The Federalist Society is having a program Tuesday in DC on a proposed federal "shield law" for journalists. Details here....
Merritt Upholds Death Sentence
Posted on April 25, 2008Ohioans, sit down before you read this. The Sixth Circuit today upheld the conviction and death sentence of Marvallous Keene for "eight counts of aggravated murder, six counts of aggravated robbery, one count of aggravated burglary, one count of burglary,...
Religious Freedom in Prison
Posted on April 25, 2008"Robert Loblaw" over at Decision of the Day points to the Seventh Circuit case of Koger v. Bryan, 05-1904 (7th Cir., April 24, 2008) reversing a district court's summary judgment dismissal of inmate Gregory Koger's claim under Religious Land Use...
Blog Scan
Posted on April 24, 2008U.S. Sentencing Commission On Retroactivity of Crack Amendment: Thanks to Douglas Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy for his post on the U.S. Sentencing Commission's release of data on the retroactive application of the crack amendment. The Commission's data, found...
Amendments to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure
Posted on April 24, 2008Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court adopted amendments to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The amendments implemented the Crime Victims' Rights Act (18 U.S.C. §3771). Yesterday's order amended Criminal Rules 1 (Scope; Definitions), 12.1 (Notice of an Alibi Defense), 17...
Mutiny on the Full Means
Posted on April 24, 2008Among the powers granted to Congress is the power "To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas." Art. I § 8 cl. 9. Yes, there really are cases of tyrannical captains and resulting mutinies to this...
Who Decides?
Posted on April 24, 2008Patrick J. Buchanan has this editorial at Human Events, titled "The Greenhouse Effect": There is another and larger issue here. It is the question not of what is decided, but of who decides. Whether Citizen Stevens abhors the death penalty...
The Big Island
Posted on April 24, 2008From Fox News: HONOLULU (AP) ? A 65-year-old first-time drug offender on the Big Island is facing a maximum 20-year sentence. The case against farmer David Finley of Volcano involves possession of more than 75 pounds of marijuana. Police say...
News Scan
Posted on April 23, 2008Robot Bums-Rush. AP writer Greg Bluestein has this story about a homemade remote controlled robot built by ex-marine Rufus Terrill. The 300 pound waist high robot marked ?security? patrols the street in front of his Atlanta bar after dark,...
Imprisonment Article in the NYT
Posted on April 23, 2008Adam Liptak has this article in the New York Times today on the controversy over incarceration rates and how ours is so much higher than Europe's. The article begins with the usual stuff we hear all the time. Later, it...
Decision Days
Posted on April 23, 2008Today is the last day of oral arguments for the U.S. Supreme Court's current term. The term calendar shows "non-argument sessions" (in blue) on Monday of each week from now to June, except Memorial Day. The session is Tuesday that...
Rights, Remedies, and Arrests: Virginia v. Moore
Posted on April 23, 2008The Supreme Court today decided Virginia v. Moore, holding 8-1-0 that an arrest based on probable cause is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment even though the officer was not authorized by state law to arrest for that offense....
Blog Scan
Posted on April 23, 2008Giles Commentary: Yesterday, Richard Friedman's Confrontation Blog had this post by Joan Meier, of George Washington Law School and DV LEAP. Meier's post argues that the conflict between the confrontation clause and the forfeiture principle addressed in Giles v...
Reading tea leaves in the Baze sequels
Posted on April 22, 2008Last Friday, this post at Capital Defense Weekly said, "Monday’s order list will give a better understanding of which challenges may or may not meet the plurality’s standard." Yes, I think so. Over at SCOTUSblog, Lyle Denniston writes, "The Supreme...
Giles Not the Case To Expand Forfeiture By Wrongdoing
Posted on April 22, 2008Today's Supreme Court oral arguments in Giles v. California started and ended well for the Petitioner, Giles, a man who was convicted for the first degree murder of his former girlfriend Brenda Avie. In today's arguments, Petitioner contested the admissibility...
Blog Scan
Posted on April 22, 2008Mumia Abu-Jamal: Steven D. Levitt, at Freakonomics Blog authored this post, cautioning against the uninformed support of convicted murderer Mumia Abu-Jamal. Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981...
News Scan
Posted on April 22, 2008Fight Crime, Shoot Back: The owner of an Oakland liquor store, shot in the leg during and attempted robbery last Saturday, shot back with his own gun, hitting the robber three times according this report by SF Chronicle writer Henry...
Blog Scan
Posted on April 21, 2008SCOTUS Podcasts: The Federalist Society has podcasts on the Kennedy v. Louisiana argument by Bill Otis and on the Baze v. Rees decision by Kent Scheidegger. Reaction to Baze Commentary: SCOTUSblog has posted a commentary by Eric Berger, an assistant....
Crime & Punishment in the U.S. and Europe
Posted on April 21, 2008This post is by Julia Wobbe, a student at California State University, Sacramento. There has been much controversy about the incarceration rate in the United States, which is much higher than in European countries. It is informative to consider these...
News Scan
Posted on April 21, 2008Genetic Informants. Washington Post writer Ellen Nakashima reports on a new tool that is helping to identify suspects through a relative's DNA. The initial use of this tool was in the BTK murder case. Police in Kansas obtained a court...
Cert. Denied in Delayed Capital Cases
Posted on April 21, 2008The Supreme Court denied certiorari this morning in several capital cases it had been sitting on since the fall, when it took up the lethal injection case of Baze v. Rees. The cases include Taylor v. Crawford (Missouri), No. 07-303,...
Execution on Hold. Although the
Posted on April 18, 2008Execution on Hold. Although the U.S. Supreme Court upheld lethal injection to be constitutional, the Nevada Supreme Court will not lift a stay on a convicted murderer?s execution. AP writer Brendan Riley from the San Francisco Chronicle reports Bill Gang,...
Journal of Law and Economics
Posted on April 18, 2008The August, 2007 issue of JLE is now available online. Two articles relate to criminal law: Is Crime Contagious? by Jens Ludwig and Jeffrey R. Kling and Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: Evidence from Underage Drunk-Driving Laws by Christopher Carpenter.....
Blog Scan
Posted on April 18, 2008Commentary on Baze: SCOTUSblog has posted a commentary by our own Kent Scheidegger on what the Court's opinions in Baze will mean for the states as they look to implementing death sentences. The commentary states that in the wake of...
Statutory Interpretation
Posted on April 18, 2008Nearly lost in the hubbub over Baze v. Rees were two federal sentencing decisions handed down by the high court this week. For those who practice mainly in the state courts, the results are less important than the statutory interpretation...
Berry on Deck?
Posted on April 17, 2008Last October, the Supreme Court denied certiorari and a stay in Earl Berry's case from the Mississippi Supreme Court but then granted a stay in his federal § 1983 case from the Fifth Circuit. Previous posts are here and here....
Blog Scan
Posted on April 17, 2008Judicial Thought Process: Ed Whelan at Bench Memos (NRO) posted a link to his review on Judge Posner's new book How Judges Think. The review strings together a series of seven comments on Posner's book, and ultimately argues that Posner...
News Scan
Posted on April 17, 2008DNA samples will soon be taken on every person arrested by federal law enforcement officers according to this story by Washington Post writers Ellen Nakashima and Spencer Hsu, and another by AP writer Eileen Sullivan. The new authorization, part of...
Baze Coverage
Posted on April 17, 2008The Baze decision has extensive coverage in the news today. Here is a sampling: Adam Liptak in the New York Times. Jennifer McMenamin in the Baltimore Sun. Debra Saunders in the San Francisco Chronicle. David Savage in the Los Angeles...
Some Points of Agreement in Baze
Posted on April 16, 2008Baze is one of those dreaded splintered opinions where we will have to pick our way through to figure out what the law is for some time to come. Even so, there are a number of important points on which...
News Scan
Posted on April 16, 2008DNA testing methods are found ?scientifically sound.? The Wales Government commissioned an independent study to test the reliability of low template (LCN) DNA testing as reported by Gavin O?Connor in the Western Mail. The test is considered accurate but...
Blog Scan
Posted on April 16, 2008U.S. Supreme Court Opinions: SCOTUSblog has posts on the U.S. Supreme Court decisions released today. Today the Court announced rulings in Begay v. United States, Baze v. Rees, and Burgess v. United States. Lyle Denniston's in-depth post on the opinion...
Death Penalty Statement
Posted on April 16, 2008My written statement on the death penalty to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice is now available here....
Baze Decided
Posted on April 16, 2008The Supreme Court decided the lethal injection case, Baze v. Rees today. The opinion is here. There is no majority, but I expect the plurality opinion by Chief Justice Roberts will be treated as the authoritative word. A couple of...
Blog Scan
Posted on April 15, 2008Social Science Journal: Psychology and Crime News posted comments on three Social Science Journal articles that addressed: homicide in the southern United States, individual perceptions and how they affect hate crime legislation, and a study on whether capital murderers (murderers...
SCOTUS Notes
Posted on April 15, 2008The U.S. Supreme Court celebrated Tax Filing Day by filing two tax opinions. Lyle Denniston discusses them at SCOTUSblog. This is also National Crime Victims' Rights Week. Perhaps the Court could celebrate that by deciding Baze v. Rees and bringing...
Crime and Foreclosures
Posted on April 15, 2008Stop the presses. A politician has wildly exaggerated. ?If you take a one-eighth square mile which is generally the size of a city block in most cities, and you end up with one foreclosure on that city block, two things...
Justices Decline ?Zoloft Defense? Case
Posted on April 14, 2008Ed Silverman over at Pharmalot notes that the Supreme Court denied cert. in the "Zoloft Defense" case, Pittman v. South Carolina....
Homicide Moratorium?
Posted on April 02, 2008The Los Angeles City Council debated a resolution declaring a 40-hour moratorium on murder, David Zahniser reports for the LA Times. Commenters at the Volokh Conspiracy discuss whether this was an April Fool's joke. Ultimately, the council "decided instead to...
Of Crime and Governors
Posted on April 02, 2008California Attorney General, and former Governor, Jerry Brown is hinting he may run for governor again, according to this article in the SF Chron by John Wildermuth. His speech to the Democratic convention includes this statement: When he was governor,...
Crawford, Experts, and Underlying Facts
Posted on April 01, 2008Julie Seamon has this article in the Georgetown Law Review on the impact of Crawford v. Washington on the practice of experts testifying on the basis of hearsay facts. With respect to prosecution experts who testify in the form of...
News Scan
Posted on April 01, 2008Appeal of Congressional Search Denied: The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the government's appeal of last year's DC Circuit holding regarding a search of the Congressional office of Rep. William Jefferson (D-La). A story by LA Times reporter David...
Interesting Reading...
Posted on April 01, 2008Psychology and Crime News mentions several studies in the current issue of The Social Science Journal. The abstract for the study: Secondary analysis of dangerousness among death sentenced capital murderers reads thusly: The theory of incapacitation involves reducing an offender's...
Comment Experiment Ends At SCOTUSblog
Posted on April 01, 2008From the very beginning -- in the pre-Internet dial-up BBS days -- online discussions have been infested with intellectual ankle-biters who have little or nothing of substance to add to the discussion and simply sling insults at those who do....
Do the time, lower the crime
Posted on March 31, 2008James Q. Wilson has this op-ed in the Sunday LA Times, responding to the Pew report about 1 in 100 in prison and the accompanying hullabaloo. In the last 10 years, the effect of prison on crime rates has been...
News Scan
Posted on March 31, 2008More on Medellin: An editorial in today's Washington Post reports its agreement with the Court's decision last week in Medellin v. Texas....
SCOTUS Today
Posted on March 31, 2008Not much of interest in criminal law in the Supreme Court today. The Court decided an original jurisdiction case, New Jersey v. Delaware, involving a long-running dispute between those states regarding jurisdiction over the Delaware River. The only point of...
More Cops, Less Crime?
Posted on March 31, 2008In conjunction with James Q. Wilson's op-ed about the recent Pew report on incarceration and crime rates, Bill Stuntz states about a week ago: One of the key lessons of the Iraq surge is that putting more boots on violent...
Final Cal. Commission Hearing
Posted on March 30, 2008Meanwhile, back on the Left Coast, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice held its third and final hearing in Santa Clara. Howard Mintz of the San Jose Mercury-News was there and has this story. This commission was...
Yet Another Stacked Death Penalty Commission
Posted on March 30, 2008While a death penalty repeal proposal was defeated in the Maryland Legislature, a bill creating yet another death penalty study commission did pass. One might have thought that the same persons of sense who defeated the repeal would have insured...
News Scan
Posted on March 28, 2008Spy drones for crime fighting may soon be used in Miami. Tom Brown from the Herald Tribune reports this new 14-pound drone is awaiting approval from the U. S. Federal Aviation Administration. The drones will be used as an extra...
New Sentecing Hearing for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Posted on March 27, 2008The Third Circuit has ordered a new sentencing hearing in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of killing Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. The lengthy 118 page opinion is here and the Fox news story here....
Medellin: What Would Congressional Implementation of Avena Look Like?
Posted on March 27, 2008Despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Supreme Court's decision in Medellin v. Texas, the holding is not all that remarkable. It has long been established that not all treaties are self-executing, and the Court held that...
The Supreme Penalty
Posted on March 27, 2008Erin Sheley has an interesting column in the Weekly Standard on the two death penalty cases before the Court this term. As she puts it: In Baze, two Kentucky death row inmates--one convicted of murdering two police officers, the other...
Neurolaw Postdoc Opportunity
Posted on March 27, 2008The MacArthur Law and Neuroscience Project is seeking postdocs in the area of neurolaw: POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH POSITION MACARTHUR LAW AND NEUROSCIENCE PROJECT Area of Research: Law and Neuroscience...
Nebraska Death Penalty Repeal Fails
Posted on March 26, 2008Nebraska's one-house Legislature rejected the bill to repeal the death penalty 28-20. AP story here. However, the Legislature has not provided a statutory replacement for the electric chair thrown out by the Nebraska Supreme Court, as discussed here....
Panetti Follow Up
Posted on March 26, 2008On remand after the U.S. Supreme Court decision last June in Panetti v. Quarterman, No. 06-6407, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas has found Scott Panetti to be competent to be executed. The decision, in two...
News Scan
Posted on March 26, 2008Big Sister on the Prowl. In today?s Washington Post Courtland Milloy reports on D.C. police chief, Cathy Lanier, who started her Safe Homes Initiative, primarily with women in mind. This new initiative would allow searching of homes if there were...
Confrontation and Blumenthal
Posted on March 25, 2008The Confrontation Clause has bestowed a freebie on an unlikely beneficiary. Sidney Blumenthal, former aide to President Clinton and present adviser to presidential candidate Clinton was charged in New Hampshire with aggravated drunken driving and doing 70 in a 30...
Medellin Decided
Posted on March 25, 2008The Supreme Court decided the case of Medellin v. Texas, 5-1-3. The case involves a decision of the International Court of Justice that the United States must reconsider the claims of about 50 Mexican nationals that their rights under the...
News Scan
Posted on March 24, 2008Elderly Killers: Victoria Kim from the L.A. Times reports on two elderly women, Helen Golay, 77 and Olga Rutterschimdt, 75, who are on trial for staging hit-and-runs to collect life insurance. The two victims, Kenneth McDavid and Paul Vados, were...
News Scan
Posted on March 19, 2008Gruesome pictures bring jury to tears as they see the room where 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown was bound to a chair, starved and forced to urinate in a litter box. Reported by The New York Times yesterday, Cesar Rodriguez was convicted...
SCOTUS Sudoku Update
Posted on March 19, 2008With yesterday's decision in Washington State Grange and today's decision in Snyder, we return once again to our SCOTUS sudoku puzzle, trying to figure out who is writing the remaining cases. The premise of SCOTUS sudoku is that no justice...
Batson, Again
Posted on March 19, 2008Today the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Snyder v. Louisiana, No. 06-10119. There were 5 black veniremembers in the 36 who survived the for-cause stage of jury selection, and the prosecution peremptorily challenged all 5. That looks bad,...
What's in a Name?
Posted on March 19, 2008As mentioned previously, the idea that pedophilia is a mental illness on par with schizophrenia or other strongly biologically caused illnesses of the mind is weak. Yet that hasn't stopped many from suggesting otherwise. And when it comes to the...
The Gun Case
Posted on March 18, 2008The big news today in the press and the blogs is the argument in the D.C. gun case, District of Columbia v. Heller. The transcript is available on the Supreme Court website, and there is audio at CSPAN. CJLF did...
The Miura Case: Foreign Judgments, Double Jeopardy, and Ex Post Facto
Posted on March 18, 2008Japanese media are abuzz with the case of Kazuyoshi Miura, a Japanese businessman accused of killing his wife and then claiming they had been mugged during a visit to Los Angeles in 1981. But the Los Angeles District Attorney has...
Facial Challenges
Posted on March 18, 2008The Supreme Court issued one opinion today in the political case of Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party, No. 06-713. For criminal law practitioners, the case is primarily of interest for the Court's continuing hostility to "facial" challenges...
News Scan
Posted on March 17, 2008DNA database: According to Gary Pugh, who is soon to be the chief spokesperson for the Association of Chief Police Officers? (ACPO), England does not collect enough DNA samples from the ?right people? and could benefit from targeting samples from...
Monday Orders
Posted on March 17, 2008The Monday orders list is here. Among the cases listed in Friday's conference post, the Court granted certiorari in Melendez-Diaz, the lab report confrontation case, Sarausad on state-law issues and habeas, and Ice on Apprendi and consecutive sentencing...
Anesthesia Monitor Questioned
Posted on March 14, 2008Anesthesia awareness is the phenomenon of patients waking up during surgery. This issue has been involved in the challenges to lethal injection and the pending Supreme Court case of Baze v. Rees. One proposed solution to the problem is a...
Confrontation and Depositions
Posted on March 14, 2008The Florida Supreme Court held yesterday that a discovery deposition is insufficient to satisfy the requirement of Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004) that the defendant have an opportunity to cross-examine before an out-of-court "testimonial" statement can be introduced...
News Scan
Posted on March 14, 2008Love hurts. A Pennsylvania doctor was sentenced to life in prison for killing his best friend thirty years ago, so he could marry the friend's wife. Michael Rubinkam, from the AP staff writes that Dr. Stephen Scher was convicted in...
SCOTUS Conference
Posted on March 14, 2008The U.S. Supreme Court held a private conference today. The same-day orders list has only routine orders. The SG gets into oral argument in Indiana v. Edwards, as always. The full orders list with grants and denials of certiorari will...
Vote Swapping
Posted on March 13, 2008Activities which are legal when freely given but criminal when purchased have been much in the news in last couple of days. Another of these is voting. In 2000, there was a scheme set up where people who really wanted...
What Neuroscience Cannot Tell Us About Humanity
Posted on March 12, 2008That's the title of an intriguing essay by David Perks, who astutely observes: Even a cursory glance at reviews of the field shows that neuroscience poses more questions than it answers. The Economist?s review in 2006, although enthusiastic about the...
News Scan
Posted on March 12, 2008Gun Battle at the White House? Robert Novak has this column in the WashPost on the remarkable event of the Solicitor General filing a brief for the United States in the D.C. gun case and then the Vice President joining...
Law Enforcement and the Next President
Posted on March 11, 2008It has been quite a while since crime and law enforcement were considered issues important enough to merit the attention of Presidential candidates. Even illegal drug use, which remains a serious national problem, has not been the subject of a...
The Humanity and Culture of Crime and Punishment
Posted on March 11, 2008Bill Stuntz over at Less Than the Least has an intriguing post about the relationship between culture, law, and punishment. He makes a number of good and interesting points about how culture shapes the law. He judiciously states: A good...
Flawing, Misleading Study on Death Penalty Costs
Posted on March 11, 2008A study on Maryland death penalty costs released last week has serious flaws and paints a misleading picture. There are three major deficiencies apparent on the face of the Urban Institute’s report: First, the study fails to consider the savings...
News Scan
Posted on March 10, 2008Maryland Death Penalty Repeal Fails: "Efforts to repeal the death penalty in Maryland were dealt an apparently fatal blow yesterday when a key state Senate committee defeated the measure, leaving a court-ordered moratorium on state executions in place and some...
Criminals Escape Fees in San Francisco
Posted on March 10, 2008An article in today's San Francisco Chronicle addresses San Francisco's inability to collect fines, victim's restitution and court-imposed fees from convicted criminals. The article can be found here. In his article, Jaxon Van Derbeken points out that only recently has...
Crime and Prison
Posted on March 07, 2008Last week the Pew Center on the States produced a report highlighting the statistic that the prison and jail population has topped 1% of the total population. The press release is here and the full report is here. In...
News Scan
Posted on March 07, 2008ipods to blame for crime? News reporter Scott Gutierrez, from seatlepi.com, sat in on a panel discussion Tuesday sponsored by Urban Institute. Crime researchers are exploring the correlation between ipods and the increase in crime over the past few years...
Virginia Veto
Posted on March 06, 2008Virginia Governor Tim Kaine has once again vetoed legislation to repeal that state's triggerman rule, reports Mason Adams for the Roanoke Times. This statute automatically exempts from the death penalty a murderer who uses someone else to actually commit the...
News Scan
Posted on March 05, 2008College Background Checks. Byron Ackerman uticaod.com reports that Herkimer County Community College officials are backing legislation that would allow peace officers to conduct background checks on students involved in a possible crime. The bill is also being supported by State...
Blog Note
Posted on March 05, 2008The Southern Appeal blog has been granted rehearing, though not en banc. Welcome back. (Hat tip: Orin Kerr at VC.)...
MMPI in Today's WSJ
Posted on March 05, 2008The front page of today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has a lengthy article about the most widely used personality test, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). The focus of the story is about a specialty sub-scale developed by Dr...
Second Amendment
Posted on March 04, 2008The Supreme Court will hear argument on Tuesday, March 18, in Heller v. District of Columbia to review a lower court holding announcing that the DC law banning firearms was unconstitutional. In this article from the Wall Street Journal, Harvard...
How Do We Define Addiction?
Posted on March 03, 2008The current issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry has an editorial arguing for the inclusion of "internet addiction" in the forthcoming 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders. Jerald J. Block, M.D. states: Internet addiction...
News Scan
Posted on March 03, 2008Brain Scans: "Figuring out just what types of neuroscience are ready for the courtroom is one of the goals of a $10 million Law & Neuroscience Project funded by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation," reports David Caruso...
Hoffman Follow Up
Posted on March 03, 2008Today, the Ninth Circuit designated for publication its order of February 14 on remand from the United States Supreme Court in Arave v. Hoffman. Accordingly the U.S. Supreme Court vacated this court's judgment to the extent that it addressed the...
SCOTUS Monday
Posted on March 03, 2008The Supreme Court issued one opinion in a criminal case today, Boulware v. United States, No. 06-1509, but it's really more of a tax case. In the orders list, the Court asked for the views of the Solicitor General in...
An Interesting New Blog
Posted on March 02, 2008Criminal law and procedure buffs may want to check out the new blog, Less Than Least, authored by the Profs. Bill Stuntz (Harvard) and David Skeel (Penn). What makes Less Than Least so intriguing comes from it's description: We are both law professors and evangelical Protestants ? a weird combination in our time...
News Scan
Posted on February 29, 2008Anti-Spam Law Upheld By a narrow 4-3 vote, the Virginia Supreme Court has upheld the criminal conviction of Jeremy Jaynes for violating Virginia's anti-spam law, Larry O'Dell reports for AP. The court rejected Jaynes' arguments on jurisdiction, First Amendment, vagueness, and the Commerce Clause...
The McCleskey Claim, Again
Posted on February 28, 2008A trial judge in Connecticut has allowed a claim of the type rejected by the Supreme Court in McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279 (1987) to go forward. This is the perennial claim that statistics show a racial or geographic "bias" in the administration of the death penalty...
News Scan
Posted on February 28, 2008Americans in Prison: An Associated Press story by David Crary cites a recent report from the Pew Center on the States indicating that one of every 100 adults is in jail or prison. The report points to habitual criminal sentencing laws such as "Three Strikes" for the high incarceration rate, "Getting tough on criminals has gotten tough on taxpayers," said the project's director...
News Scan
Posted on February 27, 2008Linda Greenhouse, the New York Times' controversial Supreme Court correspondent, has accepted a buyout offer and will be leaving after 30 years on the beat, Seth Sutel reports for AP. Officials are cracking-down on criminal immigrants. According to this Washington Post story by Ernesto Londono, strong efforts are being made by immigration officials to locate and deport illegal immigrants and monitor immigrants with criminal records, which is straining the immigration court system...
The Silence is Deafening
Posted on February 27, 2008Another Supreme Court decision day and another lone civil case, with no decision in Medellin v. Texas. There remain three undecided cases from the October calendar: Medellin, the Washington political primary case, and the Santos money laundering case...
Crime and Politics
Posted on February 26, 2008In this Washington Post column last Sunday, David Broder suggested that crime and law enforcement may emerge as a political issue this year. He cites a recent poll conducted for liberal think tank Third Way, showing that 69% of the sample thought that violent crime was a more serious threat than a terrorist attack, chosen by only 19%...
English DP Poll
Posted on February 25, 2008In London, the Sun asked readers of its Web site, "Should Britain bring back the death penalty?" The result: "And a staggering 99 per cent of the 95,000 readers who responded to our You The Jury poll said the Government SHOULD reintroduce it." Internet polls mean very little, as they suffer from a two-stage selection bias...
Harmlessness and Habeas
Posted on February 25, 2008With its grant of certiorari in the case of Chrones v. Pulido, No. 07-544, the U.S. Supreme Court ventures once more into the questions of habeas corpus, harmless error, and deference to the state court's decision on direct appeal. The Court addressed related issues last June in Fry v...
News Scan
Posted on February 25, 2008SCOTUS takes Fourth Amendment case: Today the Supreme Court agreed to review a 4th Amendment case next term regarding warrantless searches of automobiles. The Washington Post reports that Rodney J. Gant was arrested in Tucson, Arizona about 10 feet away from his parked car and placed in the back of a police car while officers searched his car...
DNA Advances in England
Posted on February 23, 2008Forensic DNA is producing more results in England than in the U.S., reports Gautam Nak in the Wall Street Journal. Some of the reasons are controversial. One reason is that the database for England and Wales includes 8% of the population. (Scotland and Northern Ireland are in a separate database...
SCOTUS Notes
Posted on February 22, 2008The U.S. Supreme Court held a conference today. The only order announced was for briefing in a Gitmo detainee case, which Lyle Denniston discusses at SCOTUSblog. For regular cases, the grants and denials will be announced Monday. Among the criminal cases considered today was Arizona v...
News Scan
Posted on February 22, 2008Murder Victim's Note Helps Convict Husband. A trial court in Wisconsin has convicted Mark Jensen of the 1998 murder of his wife, Julie, based, in part, on a note she left to her neighbor with instructions to give it to police only if she were to die. AP writer Carrie Antlfinger reports in the Washington Post that Julie had grown suspicious of her husband, Mark Jensen, and wanted someone to look into her death after she died...
Enhancement
Posted on February 22, 2008From AP in Cincinnati: A federal court jury on Friday found the owner of a company that sells "male enhancement" tablets and other herbal supplements guilty of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, bank fraud and money laundering. Steve Warshak, whose conviction was reported Friday by The Cincinnati Enquirer, is founder and president of Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, which distributes Enzyte...
News Scan
Posted on February 21, 2008Call to Restore England's Death Penalty: The relatives of a victim murdered by a British man found guilty today of killing five women are asking the government to restore the death penalty. A report by Angela Balakrishnan in today's Guardian quotes a statement by the family of Tania Nicol, Suffolk sex predator Steve Wright's last victim,"...
CLS Conference on Campus Violence
Posted on February 21, 2008Looks like an interesting event at Columbia Law School: The Health, Law and Society Program of the Columbia Law School is pleased to announce a one day conference on Violence on Campus: Prediction, Prevention and Response to be held on Friday, April 4, 2008 at the Law School...
News Scan
Posted on February 20, 2008Juvenile Offenders are going Home for Punishment in New York City according to this story by Leslie Kaufman in today's New York Times. The alternative sentencing program, called the Juvenile Justice Initiative, sends medium risk offenders back home, where the family and offender receive intensive therapy...
Retroactivity, Remedies, and AEDPA
Posted on February 20, 2008Nineteen years ago this Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court virtually eliminated the retroactive application of newly created rules of criminal procedure on federal habeas corpus in its landmark decision in Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989). Today, in Danforth v...
A "Free Spirit" Mitigation
Posted on February 20, 2008From Fox News comes the story of 24 year old Allenna Ward convicted and sentenced for having sex with several of her high school students. According to the story, forensic psychiatrist Donna Schwartz-Watts offered this supposed characterization of Ward: Schwartz-Watts said Ward is not a pedophile, but rather a childlike victim suffering from personality disorders and a repressed childhood...
SCOTUS Take Exclusionary Rule Case
Posted on February 19, 2008The U.S. Supreme Court has issued its order list from last Friday's conference. The one criminal case granted is Herring v. United States, No. 07-513. The Question Presented is: Whether the Fourth Amendment requires evidence found during a search incident to an arrest to be suppressed when the arresting officer conducted the arrest and search in sole reliance upon facially credible but erroneous information negligently provided by another law enforcement agent...
Thinking Carefully About Sex Offender Policies
Posted on February 19, 2008When one reads stories like this, it's easy to understand the public sentiment for strong punishments against sex offenders. Likewise, the horrific story of Megan Kanka which spurred the development of the various sex offender registries is another reminder why public and legislative sentiment is so inclined to favor restrictive measures against sex offenders...
News Scan
Posted on February 19, 2008FISA: The Wall Street Journal has this editorial on the FISA legislation stalled by the House. "What we have here is a remarkable display of the anti-antiterror minority at work." Mumia Abu-Jamal had his third state postconviction petition denied by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court...
A Short Note on Antidepressants, Violence, and Kazmierczak
Posted on February 16, 2008Ed Silverman at Pharmalot has this post on the emerging (albeit very preliminary) evidence that gunman Stephen Kazmierczak had stopped taking his psychiatric medication before the killings at Northern Illinois University. As ABC news reports, there's evidence that Kazmierczak had a history of mental illness, which seems to have included depression, violence, and self mutilating behaviors...
Policing Priorities
Posted on February 15, 2008Chip Johnson has this commentary in the SF Chronicle on city government priorities in Oakland, California: On the heels of the city's eighth homicide in four days, [City Administrator Deborah] Edgerly's office announced that the city, in response to complaints from local florists, would enforce a zero-tolerance policy on illegal street vendors on Valentine's Day...
SCOTUS Notes
Posted on February 15, 2008The U.S. Supreme Court held a conference today. As expected, no grants or denials of certiorari were announced. The Court did issue an orders list of routine orders regarding briefing and argument. Announcement of the cases granted and denied today will be made in Tuesday's orders list...
News Scan
Posted on February 15, 2008Judge Joseph Sneed: Today services were held for Judge Joseph Sneed, who served for over thirty years on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Bob Egelko has this story in the San Francisco Chronicle. Judge Sneed died in his home Saturday at the age of 87...
News Scan
Posted on February 13, 2008Tax/Crime Protest: In Oakland, California, shopkeeper Scott Silvera has tried for months to get mayor Ron Dellums' attention on the crime problem. "Finally, fed up, he vowed to stop paying sales taxes until he heard from the mayor's office," reports Phillip Matier in the SF Chron...
Strange Bedfellows Call for Limiting Faretta
Posted on February 12, 2008The "top side" amicus briefs have been filed in Indiana v. Edwards, No. 07-208. The briefs to date and other pertinent documents are available here. Along with the expected amici of CJLF, other states, and the federal government, we have some unusual players...
News Scan
Posted on February 12, 2008NJ Supreme Court Approves Passenger Criminal Checks An AP Story by Jeffrey Gold reports that the New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled 6-0 that police can run a criminal check on a passenger during a traffic stop. The driver and any passengers are seized when an officer stops a vehicle according to the ruling which reinstated the conviction of a passenger with outstanding warrants, a suspended license and carrying crack cocaine...
Crime and the Presidential Race
Posted on February 10, 2008Bob Egelko has this story in the SF Chron. "Crime is seldom a prominent issue in presidential primaries, largely because the front-runners in each party typically take similar positions. But the subject can explode on Democrats in a November election...
Can Nebraska Restore Its Death Penalty Without Legislation?
Posted on February 09, 2008In its decision yesterday in State v. Mata, S05-1268, the Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed the judgment, including the death sentence, of child-killer Raymond Mata. However, as noted in yesterday's News Scan, the court declared the sole method of execution prescribed by statute in that state, electrocution, to be unconstitutional...
News Scan
Posted on February 08, 2008Electrocution: Cruel and Unusual? Currently, Nebraska is the only state that utilizes the electric chair as their sole means of execution. However, Nate Jenkins from the Associated Press writes today that the Nebraska Supreme Court has ruled electrocution to be cruel and unusual...
News Scan
Posted on February 07, 2008Daryl Atkins: A Virginia circuit judge, who had previously commuted the death sentence of murderer Daryl Atkins, has announced that he will stay his order while the state's appeal is pending. A story by AP writer Sonja Barisic reports that in the appeal, the state contends that a local trial judge lacked the authority to commute Atkins' sentence...
Ding Dong, the Witch Has a Short Life Expectancy
Posted on February 06, 2008First the good news. When California's Legislature convenes for its next session after the November election, the criminal-friendly persons presently running both houses won't be running them. The voters of California have once again shown that they have much better judgment when they vote directly on issues than they do in electing legislators...
The Ubiquity of Substance Abuse in the Calculus of Crime and Mental Illness
Posted on February 06, 2008As mentioned previously, the recent National Institute of Mental Health's CATIE study suggested a link between schizophrenia and violence. That conclusion generated a lot of controversy from folks who assert that there is no link between mental illness and violence, touting the frequent mantra that those with mental illness are no more likely to become violent than the general population...
News Scan
Posted on February 06, 2008Brooklyn Police Scandal: Four Brooklyn narcotics officers have been charged with misconduct and falsifying records. Christine Hauser of the New York Times reports that Gravesend and Bay Ridge are the two areas in Brooklyn where cases have been affected the most...
McCain, Judges, and the Great Question
Posted on February 04, 2008With John McCain's emergence as the front-runner for the Republican nomination, there has been much discussion about the kind of judicial appointments he would make. For issues related to crime, judicial appointments are the single most important aspect of presidential authority...
News Scan
Posted on February 04, 2008Crime and Politics: In Olympia, Washington, lawmakers are now targeting drunk drivers and sex offenders with new bill proposals. With 2008 being an election year, officials are now trying to get tough on crime. According to Curt Woodard, an AP writer in the Seattle Post?Intelligencer, officials seem to be focusing on areas such as privacy and free speech...
News Scan
Posted on February 01, 2008An Arsonist Turns to Stalking. Today on sfgate.com Gene Johnson, from Associated Press, writes that Allen Parmelee is spending the remainder of his 24-year sentence digging up information on the judges, lawyers and police officers that put him behind bars...
Japan Executions
Posted on February 01, 2008The sun set on three murderers in the Land of the Rising Sun today, the AP reports. What kind of crime gets one executed in Japan? Pretty much the same as here: (1) murder of a prior rape victim in retaliation for reporting the crime; (2) rape and murder in two separate cases; and (3) murder of two people and attempted murder of a third...
Injection Developments
Posted on January 30, 2008The Eleventh Circuit vacated a stay of execution granted on an injection claim in McNair v. Allen. The court found that the § 1983 claim was barred by the statute of limitations. There are two plaintiffs in the case. The one with an imminent execution date (tomorrow) is James Callahan...
News Scan
Posted on January 30, 2008The name says it all according to Kevin Johnson in this story in USA Today. The Caston Brothers aka ?James Gang? from Lake Providence, LA had their lives planned for them at birth. Their father named all three sons, Jesse, Frank and Sonny after the outlaw James Gang...
News Scan
Posted on January 29, 2008DNA evidence has led to the arrest of a Chilean man for the 1997 murder of University of Colorado co-ed Susannah Chase according to this Associated Press story by Ivan Moreno. Diego Olmos-Alcalde was in the Boulder County Jail for a parole violation when he was arrested for the Chase killing...
News Scan
Posted on January 28, 2008Religion and the Death Penalty: Walter Berns of American Enterprise Institute has this article on Europe's obsession with the death penalty. "What explains this obsession with the death penalty? Hard to say, but probably the fact that abolishing it is one of the few things Europeans can do that make them feel righteous; in fact, very few...
Pardon Power
Posted on January 28, 2008Here is an interesting blog dedicated to news about pardons. The blogger is P. S. Ruckman, Jr., Associate Professor of Political Science at Rock Valley College, Illinois.
Intellectual Dishonesty Epic
Posted on January 25, 2008Joel Jacobsen at Judging Crimes has a series of long posts, 3 so far, titled "Intellectual dishonesty epic." The series provides some interesting historical background regarding one of the most dishonest decisions in the history of the Supreme Court, Fay v...
News Scan
Posted on January 25, 2008Patriot Act: A former sailor, charged with leaking information about a navy battle group to suspected terrorist supporters in London, has lost his bid to have incriminating evidence intercepted by taps to his phone and emails suppressed, according to this AP story by John Christoffersen...
Conn. Death Penalty Repeal Effort Fails
Posted on January 24, 2008An attempt to repeal the death penalty in Connecticut was rejected by a vote of 89-49 by that state's House of Representatives, Keith M. Phaneuf and Jenna N. Carlesso report in the Journal Inquirer.
The Horror of Our Failed Incapacitation Policies for Sex Offenders
Posted on January 24, 2008It seems fashionable lately for many scholars to decry our criminal justice polices surrounding sex offenders. Indeed, classifying all sex offenses - from adolescents who take nude pictures of themselves to the worst sex abuse imaginable - seems unwise...
Cal. Supreme Punts DP Discovery Issue
Posted on January 23, 2008In 1990, the voters of California passed Proposition 115, which among other things added a discovery chapter to the Penal Code, §§ 1054.1 et seq. (Most important criminal law is enacted by initiative in California, due to the permanent dysfunctionality of our Legislature...
Injection Inertia
Posted on January 22, 2008The Tennessean has this article on Gov. Bredesen's opposition to a proposal to change lethal injection from the three-drug method presently under attack in Baze v. Rees to a one-drug method similar to that used by veterinarians. His position, in essence, is that any change from an established method triggers many years of litigation...
Padilla Gets 17 Years
Posted on January 22, 2008Jose Padilla was sentenced to 17 years, 4 months for conspiracy to commit terrorism, Curt Anderson reports for AP. He is a U.S. citizen who was detained on charges of a "dirty bomb" plot, leading to this Supreme Court decision on jurisdiction in habeas corpus cases...
SCOTUS Today
Posted on January 22, 2008The Supreme Court today issued an orders list and one opinion. The opinion in Ali v. Federal Bureau of Prisons is an exercise in statutory interpretation on the federal government's waiver of sovereign immunity in 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b)(1) and an exception to that waiver in 28 U...
News Scan
Posted on January 21, 2008Daryl Atkins, the subject of the Supreme Court's June 2002 ruling in Atkins v. Virginia, has won a Virginia Circuit Court ruling commuting his death sentence to life in prison according to this Associated Press story . Atkins was sentenced to death in 1996 for the kidnap, robbery and murder of a young Air Force recruit...
Supreme Court Grants
Posted on January 18, 2008The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in six cases today, all civil. SCOTUSblog has the details. Criminal cases that were on the conference list for today are likely either denied (to be announced Tuesday) or "relisted" to be considered again at a later conference...
Praise for the History Channel
Posted on January 18, 2008The History channel has been running an excellent series on the development of gangs in the United States. Gangland is an intriguing and revealing look at the realities of gangs. Highly recommended.
More Sense at the Ninth
Posted on January 17, 2008Late last month, we noted a welcome trend at the Ninth Circuit to go en banc more often to correct more of the rogue panel decisions that have given that court its reputation. Today that trend continues in Plumlee v. Masto. The case involves a difficult client who demands appointment of a different attorney because of a deterioration in the relationship, even though the attorney appointed for him has no actual conflict and has done nothing wrong...
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This is a very tough situation your friend is in. It is difficult to know the ex...
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