Eyewitness identification is widely considered to be one of the most powerful pieces of evidence a prosecutor can offer at a criminal trial. But psychologists continue to debate whether witnesses to a crime can accurately relay what they saw. The Supreme Court has debated the due process implications of such [...]
At the conclusion of oral arguments on Wednesday, pundits were left guessing whether the Supreme Court would declare that Americans’ constitutional right to privacy bars prison officials from strip searching them if and when they are jailed for minor, nonviolent offenses. The case, Florence v. Bd. of Freeholders, explores both [...]
Anthony Cooper is far from the most sympathetic litigant before the Supreme Court this term. In 2003, Cooper shot a woman four times as she ran away from him. Though Cooper’s behavior was by all accounts egregious, his attorney’s conduct was pretty bad as well. When a criminal defendant turns down a plea deal based on his attorney’s ignorance of the law and subsequently receives a harsher sentence after trial, can he seek to overturn his sentence, alleging ineffective assistance of counsel?
While driving with his family in March 2005, Albert Florence was arrested on a bench warrant for failing to pay a court fine. Florence had, in fact, paid the fine years before and the matter was eventually resolved – but not before Florence had been repeatedly strip-searched by prison officials during a six-day stay in county correctional facilities. The invasiveness of the facility’s intake procedures is jarring, especially in light of the inconsequentiality of Florence’s purported offense. But are the procedures constitutional?
![[Update] Supreme Court Won’t Review Duty To Cheer For Your Rapist](http://harvardcrcl.org/wp-content/themes/v1/scripts/timthumb.php?src=http://harvardcrcl.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/pg-26-rapist_603053t.jpg&w=160&h=120&zc=1)
The Supreme Court has declined to take the case of a Texas high school cheerleader who was kicked off the squad after refusing to cheer for the basketball player whom she alleges raped her. The Fifth Circuit ruling not only upheld the school’s right to punish her for refusing to cheer, but dismissed her suit as frivolous, requiring her family to cover the school’s legal fees.
In a relatively little-noted decision last term, the Supreme Court favored a particular vision of federalism over the protection of religious freedom. The 6-2 ruling, in Sossamon v. Texas, barred money damages in private actions brought by prisoners against state and local governments under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA). Sossamon continues a trend of denying prisoners any effective opportunity for the enforcement of their rights.
Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Carlson v. Green, inmates have been able to sue individual prison officials for violating their Eighth Amendment rights. A recent trend in federal prisons is threatening to destroy this cause of action for prisoners. Now it is up to the Supreme Court to clear up this controversial question and resolve the circuit split.
Lyle Denniston, a reporter at SCOTUS Blog, posted an extremely insightful review yesterday of this past Supreme Court term. In essence, he argues that the Roberts court took a much more activist position in 2010-11, disregarding the so-called “Ashwander rules.” Just to give you some context, in Ashwander v. Tennessee [...]
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