As I mentioned on Friday, in four days last week SCOTUS
almost doubled its output of the last four months. We talked about the two 4th Amendment
decisions, Florida v.
Harris (drug-sniffing dog) and Bailey v. US
(detention for search warrant) last Thursday and Friday,
and concluded that the pro-government decision (Harris) could've been worse, and the pro-defendant decision (Bailey) could've been better. At least, I did; your mileage may vary. Of the seven other decisions handed down,
four were criminal: Evans v. Michigan dealt with the Double Jeopardy Clause, Johnson v. Williams was another go at
the deference to state decisions in federal habeas claims, Henderson v. US concerned the question of "plain error," and in Chaidez v. US, the Court held that Padilla v. Kentucky, which required that
attorneys inform their clients of the deportation risks of guilty pleas, does
not apply retroactively. I'll have a
fuller description of those cases on Thursday, by which time I will presumably
have read them and have some better idea of what I'm talking about. This week, the Court holds oral argument in Maryland v. King, concerning whether the
state can require arrestees to submit to DNA testing for purposes of keeping the
resulting profile in the national database, so we might discuss that, too.
The Ohio Supreme Court didn't hand down any decisions, but
it did grant review in a bunch of new cases, including five criminal ones. Among the issues presented are whether the
soliciting statute is overbroad, which we'll discuss below, and whether capital
defendants have the right to effective assistance of the mitigation
expert. And there's one on HB 86. The new law raised the threshold for theft
offenses from $500 to $1,000, and there's no question that a defendant who
steals, say, $600 before the effective date of the new statute, but is sentenced
after it, is entitled to be sentenced as for a misdemeanor. But is he also entitled to have the offense classified
as a misdemeanor? The districts are
split on the issue, with the 8th holding he's not and the 2nd and 9th holding
that he is. The court will sort it out.
In the courts of appeals...
As I mentioned on Friday, in four days last week SCOTUS
almost doubled its output of the last four months. We talked about the two 4th Amendment
decisions, Florida v.
Harris (drug-sniffing dog) and Bailey v. US
(detention for search warrant) last Thursday and Friday,
and concluded that the pro-government decision (Harris) could've been worse, and the pro-defendant decision (Bailey) could've been better. At least, I did; your mileage may vary. Of the seven other decisions handed down,
four were criminal: Evans v. Michigan dealt with the Double Jeopardy Clause, Johnson v. Williams was another go at
the deference to state decisions in federal habeas claims, Henderson v. US concerned the question of "plain error," and in Chaidez v. US, the Court held that Padilla v. Kentucky, which required that
attorneys inform their clients of the deportation risks of guilty pleas, does
not apply retroactively. I'll have a
fuller description of those cases on Thursday, by which time I will presumably
have read them and have some better idea of what I'm talking about. This week, the Court holds oral argument in Maryland v. King, concerning whether the
state can require arrestees to submit to DNA testing for purposes of keeping the
resulting profile in the national database, so we might discuss that, too.
The Ohio Supreme Court didn't hand down any decisions, but
it did grant review in a bunch of new cases, including five criminal ones. Among the issues presented are whether the
soliciting statute is overbroad, which we'll discuss below, and whether capital
defendants have the right to effective assistance of the mitigation
expert. And there's one on HB 86. The new law raised the threshold for theft
offenses from $500 to $1,000, and there's no question that a defendant who
steals, say, $600 before the effective date of the new statute, but is sentenced
after it, is entitled to be sentenced as for a misdemeanor. But is he also entitled to have the offense classified
as a misdemeanor? The districts are
split on the issue, with the 8th holding he's not and the 2nd and 9th holding
that he is. The court will sort it out.
In the courts of appeals...