Category: SCOTUS
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Kentucky v. King
There’s been much hand-ringing over the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Kentucky v. King, decided 8-1 with Ginsburg dissenting. In fact, the Seattle Times has declared that the Supreme Court OKs warrantless searches. Where have they have been for the last 97 years? This certainly isn’t the first decision on the topic. The Kentucky holding: “The…
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Georgia Capital Punishment Watch
Couple things in the news lately. Creative Loafing and the New York Times have picked up on the fact that last summer Georgia purchased their supply of sodium thiopental from Dream Pharma, “a shady, unlicensed company that operates out of the back room of a driving school in London, England.” In addition, Troy Davis filed…
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The end of the line for Troy Davis?
This morning, the U.S. District Court judge who heard two days of evidence in the Troy Davis case as ordered by the Supreme Court ruled that Davis’ team had not demonstrated his actual innocence or his entitlement to a new trial. This is probably the end of the line for Davis, as Judge William T. Moore…
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CA “Prop 8” Gay Marriage Ban Ruled Unconstitutional
The U.S. District Court judge hearing the challenge to California’s Proposition 8 referendum banning gay marriage has just ruled it unconstitutional and granted a permanent injunction against its enforcement. Read the entire Order (138 pages of it) here. I haven’t read it yet, but I hear it found the law unconstitutional on both due process…
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“We’re in trouble in Georgia.”
Yesterday’s New York Times had a depressingly bleak story cataloguing all the problems with Georgia’s chronically underfunded public defender system, in which former state Supreme Court justice Arthur Fletcher made the statement above. The article was prompted by a recent Georgia Supreme Court ruling that a death penalty defendant should have accepted the public defenders appointed for him by now-resigned…
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SCOTUS Confirmation Hearing
AboveTheLaw brings a little humor to Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearing by providing her top five quotes of day two. My favorite part? Lindsey Graham wanted to know how Elena Kagan felt about the war on terror (or “terra,” in his heavy Southern accent). He asked her where she was on Christmas day, when a would-be…