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SCOTUS decisions

So #StayMadAbby is a thing.

MysteryMen said:
So you think I don't understand opinions any more than an 8-year old? Nice
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I don't know you so it's hard to say (though your reaction to a comment during oral argument makes me wonder). Just pointing out that reading the last 5 years worth of SCOTUS opinions and the transcripts of half the oral arguments doesn't really mean much other than indicating you have too much time on your hands.
 
Supreme Court finds Florida’s capital punishment process unconstitutional

The Supreme Court found Florida’s unique system of imposing a death sentence unconstitutional Tuesday, saying it gave the jury too small a role in the process.

The court voted 8 to 1 against the sentencing procedure in a state that’s among the leaders in imposing capital punishment.

The constitution “requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the majority. “A jury’s mere recommendation is not enough.”
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Someone tell Alabama.
 
I'm surprised they didn't take the Alabama case back in 2013, but it's hard to imagine the practice surviving that much longer there given yesterday's decision.
 
Alabama is assuredly next. Worked on a capital case rooted in Alabama and the eagerness the state has with proceeding with the death penalty even with federal claims pending is pretty disgusting.
 
Supreme Court overturns death sentence; rules prosecutors intentionally kept blacks off jury

Chief Justice John G. Roberts described as "nonsense" the prosecutors' claims that they excluded several blacks from the jury for legitimate reasons.

It is our "firm conviction," he said, that the prosecutors were "motivated in substantial part by race" when they struck two black citizens from the jury. "Two peremptory strikes on the basis of race are two more than the Constitution allows," he said.
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Thomas was the lone dissent and it's....interesting. He seems to believe that this is overreach by the Supreme Court into an area that should be within the purview of states' rights. Seems like that's a pretty strange position to take on the topic IMO since the issue raises constitutional implications.
 
Junebug said:
That's not at all what Thomas is saying. He's just saying (1) it is possible that no federal question jurisdiction exists because it appeared the prisoner procedurally defaulted on his habeas claim under state law (thus triggering the "adequate and independent state law grounds" doctrine) and (2) on the merits, the SCOTUS inappropriately failed to defer to the state courts' findings of fact.
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Good rundown. I was relying on online analysis rather than reading it. Thanks!
 
U.S. Supreme Court rules for police in Utah search case

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled drug evidence discovered by South Salt Lake police after a man was illegally stopped and then searched because he was found to have a minor traffic warrant can be used against the defendant.

The majority in the 5-3 opinion said the evidence seized after a suspect is arrested on a valid warrant — even if that warrant was discovered in an illegal stop — is admissible in court as long as the stop is not the result of flagrant police misconduct.

The ruling reinstates the conviction of Edward Joseph Strieff Jr., who had been found with methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia during an unlawful stop in 2006.
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Read Sonia Sotomayor’s Atomic Bomb of a Dissent Slamming Racial Profiling and Mass Imprisonment

“Most striking about the Court’s opinion,” Sotomayor notes “is its insistence that the event here was ‘isolated,’ with ‘no indication that this unlawful stop was part of any systemic or recurrent police misconduct.’ ” But in truth, “nothing about this case is isolated.” Sotomayor then dives into the widespread police misconduct that has dominated headlines for several years, focusing on the Department of Justice’s Ferguson report to demonstrate that “outstanding warrants are surprisingly common.”

The Department of Justice, Sotomayor writes, “recently reported that in the town of Ferguson, Missouri, with a population of 21,000, 16,000 people had outstanding warrants against them.” That means 76 percent of Ferguson residents have, under the court’s decision, effectively surrendered their Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizure. “In the St. Louis metropolitan area,” moreover, “officers ‘routinely’ stop people—on the street, at bus stops, or even in court—for no reason other than ‘an officer’s desire to check whether the subject had a municipal arrest warrant pending.’ ”
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ClZvteZWgAAC8No.jpg
 
Deacon923 said:
Abigail Fisher loses. JHMD weeps for the asians.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/fisher-university-of-texas/470676/?utm_source=wmnfb
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If you like your public racism, you can keep your public racism. #wellapparentlyyesALLAsians

Oh this is rich...
As this Court has said, enrolling a diverse student body “promotes cross-racial understanding, helps to break down racial stereotypes, and enables students to better understand persons of different races.”

In order to break down racial stereotypes, we're going to weight your test scores and academic record based on, well, what we're extrapolating about your abilities based on your...race. GTFOH. #youknowhowIknowyouarelying

Also not to be missed...

the University explains that it strives to provide an “academic environment” that offers a “robust exchange of ideas, exposure to differing cultures, preparation for the challenges of an increasingly diverse workforce, and acquisition of competencies required of future leaders.”

Well, except for the Safe Spaces, Trigger Warnings and "Conservatives Need Not Apply" hiring criteria. Not THAT diverse and not THAT robust. Let's not get crazy, just go easy on the Asians and their overabundance of white privilege. Got it. Take tomorrow off, guys.

***

In other words, only 21 percent of undergraduate classes with five or more students in them had more than one African-American student enrolled. Twelve percent of these classes had no Hispanic students, as compared to 10percent in 1996. Id., at 74a, 140a. Though a college must continually reassess its need for race-conscious review, here that assessment appears to have been done with care, and a reasonable determination was made that the University had not yet attained its goals. ... In 2003, 11 percent of theTexas residents enrolled through holistic review were Hispanic and 3.5 percent were African-American. Supp.App. 157a. In 2007, by contrast, 16.9 percent of the Texas holistic-review freshmen were Hispanic and 6.8 percent were African-American. Ibid. Those increases—of 54 percent and 94 percent, respectively—show that consideration of race has had a meaningful, if still limited, effecton the diversity of the University’s freshman class.
In any event, it is not a failure of narrow tailoring

In other words, if we don't consider race, we'll never hit our quotas...uhm..."race-conscious...goals."

For the record and for posterity, I am with Alito's dissent. "At times, UT has claimed that its plan is needed to achieve a “critical mass” of African-American and Hispanic students, but it has never explained what this term means." #strictscrutiny

UT has also claimed at times that the race-based component of its plan is needed because the Top Ten Percent Plan admits the wrong kind[!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!] of African-American and Hispanic students, namely, students from poor families who attend schools in which the student body is predominantly African-American or Hispanic. As UT put it in itsbrief in Fisher I, the race-based component of its admissions plan is needed to admit “[t]he African-American or Hispanic child of successful professionals in Dallas.” Brief for Respondents, O. T. 2012, No. 11–345, p. 34. #thisiswhoyouarenow #imagineifTrumpsaidthis

And the coup de grace from the dissent, quoting with approval the following excerpt

“[J]udicial review must begin from theposition that ‘any official action that treats a person differently on account of his race or ethnic origin is inher- ently suspect.’” Ibid.; see also Grutter, 539 U. S., at 388 (KENNEDY, J., dissenting). Cold blooded.

And don't miss the shout-out to MSD in the footnote on Page 37. "This includes many excellent schools." WAKE THE NATION!
 
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TLDR Post break.

Just finished reading the Majority and Alito's dissent for the second time each. The majority opinion is an utter embarrassment to the law. Seriously, this is from a majority opinion of the United States Supreme Court:

Petitioner’s final argument is that “there are numerous other available race-neutral means of achieving” the University’s compelling interest. Brief for Petitioner 47. A review of the record reveals, however, that, at the time of petitioner’s application, none of her proposed alternatives was a workable means for the University to attain the benefits of diversity it sought.

Excuse me, did you say "her"? I could have sworn you just said "her", as in the "Petitioner" "her", but there's no way you did that, right? You just concluded that Petitioner's proposed race-neutral objectives failed to achieve the same (undefined) critical-mass?

So the party without any burden of proof loses because she didn't propose an alternative that would achieve the Party who carries the heaviest Constitutional burden known to the law's goals. That's the law, now?

I remember a time when the SCOTUS could remember who has the burden of proof. This is the problem with lying. Once you start, you have to do so much of it just to keep up.
 
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