Recently in Criminal Law Category

If you are hoping for a decision on same sex marriage, DOMA, or the Voting Rights Act, we'll save you some time -- none were released today. Today's rulings were more than mere brush-clearing, however. These holdings have major impacts on state voting laws, fundamental criminal procedure at all levels, and our oft-criticized pharmaceutical industry.

Interested in proof-of-citizenship voting laws, the right to a jury, or cheaper drugs? Read on.

Myriad was an interesting case with interesting issues. Where is the line between finding (and patenting) genetic code, as it exists in nature, and protecting the intellectual property rights of a company that spent time and money researching a gene that can predict predisposition towards breast and ovarian cancer?

It wasn't the only decision released on the court's irregularly-scheduled Thursday. If judicial participation in plea negotiations, federal preemption of local trucking regulations, or interstate water rights disputes are your topic of choice on a Friday afternoon, read on.

Today was not the day where the Supreme Court stood up and affirmed equality. Nor was it the day that they ended affirmative action or a 1960s Voting Rights Act that continues oversight over southern states' elections. Nope. Today was the day of jurisdiction over raisons, narrow decisions on arbitration, and ex post facto application to incarceration non-laws.

If you were waiting for one of the pending landmark cases, we do have good news: more opinions are scheduled for Thursday.

Perhaps the Ninth needs a copy of Scalia and Garner's Reading Law?

Calvin Jackson had a "tumultuous decade-long romantic relationship" with the victim, which included multiple allegations of physical abuse and sexual assault. The troubles culminated in the events of the night of October 21, 1998, when Jackson surprised her at her new apartment.

In 2009, Alonzo King allegedly menaced a group of people with a shotgun. He was arrested and charged with first- and second-degree assault. During booking, officers swabbed his cheek for purposes of DNA identification. His DNA matched an unsolved 2003 rape case. After additional samples were obtained from King, the match was verified and he was convicted of the cold-case rape.

The FBI DNA identification standard used, which is required of all laboratories participating in the 50 state and federal Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), tests 13 CODIS loci from non-identifying “junk DNA,” which contain sufficient information to identify a person to a near-certainty (about 1 in 100 trillion). This minimizes privacy concerns, as the junk non-coding DNA is only useful for identification purposes, and contains no information on genetic traits, disorders, or dispositions.

In an ideologically-odd 5-4 decision, with conservative and liberal members on both sides of the split, the court reversed the Maryland Supreme Court and reinstated King’s conviction, finding DNA identification to be a reasonable search and an evolution of traditional police identification procedures.

"Everyone's innocent in here, don't you know that?"

-Red, "The Shawshank Redemption"

Earlier this week, the court released two opinions dealing with habeas corpus petitions. Though both were ideologically split 5-4 decisions, the McQuiggins v. Perkins majority opinion and dissent were unusually contentious. Scalia's dissent spends as much time mocking the majority as it does discussing the law. Ginsburg's opinion refers to the dissent as "bluster."

Underneath Scalia's huffing and puffing, however, was a series of very valid points.

We were starting to worry that the ideological differences that make for such great theater amongst the Nine were beginning to dissipate. After all, the latest handful of decisions by the Supreme Court have come down without much dissent or controversy. Were Scalia and Ginsburg becoming BFFs not just outside the Court, but in?

This week, our faith in dissent, dispute and left-versus-right schisms was validated by two decisions dealing with inmates challenging their convictions. In one, much to Justice Scalia’s chagrin, the court “created” an exception to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act’s (AEDPA) statute of limitations.

In the other, the court expanded last year’s Martinez decision, which allowed issues of ineffective assistance of counsel to be raised in collateral post-conviction proceedings in extremely limited circumstances.

Burt Lancaster has twice been convicted of murdering his girlfriend in 1993. The former police officer, with a history of severe mental problems, argued both insanity and diminished capacity at his trial in 1994. He later obtained federal habeas relief from that conviction, after successfully arguing a Batson claim.

He fared no better in his 2005 retrial, when he tried to argue diminished capacity in a bench trial. The court refused to allow him to assert the defense, citing the Michigan Supreme Court's decision in People v. Carpenter in 2001, which abolished the defense of diminished capacity.

The Supreme Court disposed of two more matters on its to-do list this morning, but it only issued one opinion.

Today, we have a unanimous opinion in McBurney v. Young and a DIG in Boyer v. Louisiana.

Let’s discuss what happened.

Adrian Moncrieffe, a Jamaican citizen, came to the U.S. legally in 1984, when he was three. During a 2007 traffic stop, police found 1.3 grams of marijuana in his car. That’s about two or three joints. Moncrieffe pleaded guilty in Georgia to possession of marijuana with intent to distribute.

Under a state statute providing more lenient treatment to first-time offenders, the trial court withheld entering a judgment of conviction or imposing any term of imprisonment, and instead required that Moncrieffe complete five years of probation, after which his charge will be expunged altogether.

The federal government, however, was not so generous, and tried to have Moncrieffe deported.