On Oct. 4, the U.S. Supreme Court kicked off its fall term by hearing arguments in two cases brought by the government in response to a June decision that has thrown federal prosecutors and judges into a tizzy. In a 5-4 ruling in Blakely v. Washington (in which the court’s most liberal and most conservative justices joined forces against the middle), the high court threw out that state’s sentencing scheme, which allowed judges to increase jail time for a defendant based on facts not presented to the jury, and ruled that juries must decide the facts on which a sentence is based. While the Blakely ruling affected the courts in a dozen states, it was an even bigger bombshell in the federal courts, which sentence 1,200 defendants each week. Under federal guidelines, judges routinely decide sentences based on facts not found by the jury – for example, in drug cases, sentences hinge almost entirely on the amount of drugs involved. Both cases brought before the court on Monday (the Booker and Fanfan cases) involve federal drug convictions, and both defendants’ sentences would be greatly reduced if the court sticks to its Blakely guns.
Also on the criminal justice front, on Oct. 13, the court will hear an appeal from the state of Missouri (in Roper v. Simmons), asking the court to decide whether executing juvenile offenders is constitutional. Christopher Simmons, then 17, was sentenced to death for a 1993 murder. The state’s high court overturned Simmons’ sentence; now Missouri is asking the Supremes to reaffirm their 1989 decision that the Eighth Amendment prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment” does not ban the execution of 16- or 17-year-old defendants. “Lower courts should be bound by this Court’s Eighth Amendment precedents,” argues Missouri Attorney General Jeremiah Nixon, “not set free to create a patchwork of differing constitutional rules, reflecting their own changing and subjective views.” Simmons’ attorneys counter that there have been significant advances in the “scientific understanding of adolescent development” in the years since the Supremes last deliberated this issue and that there has been “consistent movement” away from executing juveniles. “The execution of juvenile offenders – like that of mentally retarded offenders – is both disproportionate to their personal moral culpability and contrary to national and worldwide consensus,” attorney Jennifer Herndon argued in her brief for the court. Many fewer death-penalty states allow juvenile executions today than did back in 1989.
This term, the court will also consider whether the government can hold indefinitely aliens convicted of a crime and slated for deportation, as well as several Fourth Amendment-related cases – including whether using drug-sniffing dogs during a routine traffic stop constitutes an unlawful search. And on Dec. 6, the court is set to review – for the second time – the Texas death penalty case of Thomas Miller-El. Last year the court remanded Miller-El’s case to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling that the lower court had not fully considered Miller-El’s evidence that prosecutors deliberately kept blacks from sitting as jurors in his trial. After a rehearing, the 5th Circuit again denied Miller-El’s appeal, and the Supremes agreed to review the case again, to decide whether the 5th Circuit “so contravened” the high court’s ruling that the court must act in order to “sustain … protections against invidious discrimination.”
The court is also slated to address several other highly anticipated cases – including a challenge to municipal eminent-domain power brought by residents of a working-class New London, Conn., neighborhood slated for urban renewal. (This case could impact revitalization efforts all across the land, including in East Austin.) And the Supremes will hear a California case (Ashcroft v. Raich) which will determine whether the feds can meddle with patients using medical marijuana in compliance with the laws of their states. As of press time, however, the court had not decided whether or when it would hear Session v. Perry, the Texas re-redistricting case. For more info on all of the cases that the Supremes will consider this term, go to www.abanet.org/publiced.
This article appears in October 8 • 2004.