(X-posted from the C.D. Cal. Federal Public Defender Blog.)
In This Edition (to use bookmarks, first click blog post title):
News to Use | New Rules | Top of the Ninth | SCOTUS Focus | Short Circuits | For the Bookworms
Material Misdefinitions for $500. Dan Broderick has another guest-posting stint at Carl Gunn's blog, this time explaining how the Ninth Circuit Model Instructions get it wrong on "materiality" - namely, in that they fail make clear that materiality requires that the false statement in question be capable of influencing "the decisionmaking body to which it is addressed."
Violent Crime Down for Fifth Consecutive Year. That's according to the FBI's own stats.
New Rules. The 2012 Sentencing Guidelines Manual is out. A pdf version is available for download here.
Top of the Ninth - 9th Cir. decisions released during the week.
• Stankewitz v. Wong
(non-AEDPA habeas) (writ properly granted where state failed to rebut
petitioner's allegations of penalty phase IAC) (in dissent, O'Scannlain
would remand for further evaluation of prejudice).
• U.S. v. Aguilar-Vera
("streamlined" procedure for taking pleas en masse violates Rule 11,
though the error was harmless here because counsel stated that defendant
was not requesting individual hearing).
• U.S. v. Johnson (district court may require sex offender assessment as condition of supervised release in a firearm-possession case
when he has two decades-old prior sexual offense convictions that
involve weapons and couldn't prove he'd completed sex offender
treatment).
SCOTUS Focus.
Grants of Certiorari:
• Trevino v. Thaler (Whether court of appeals below should consider petitioner's Martinez claim).
• McQuiggin v. Perkins
(habeas) (Whether an actual-innocence exception applies to AEDPA
requirement that petitioner show extraordinary circumstance that
prevented timely filing of habeas petition, and if so, whether innocence
exception additionally applies to required showing of diligence).
Oral Argument:
• Chaidez v. U.S. (Whether Padilla applies to persons whose convictions became final before the decision was announced).
• Bailey v. U.S. (Whether police may detain person incident to execution of search warrant after person has left before warrant is executed).
• Florida v. Jardines/Florida v. Harris (dog-sniff cases)
• Clapper v. Amnesty Int'l (civil) (Whether Amnesty has standing to seek prospective relief in challenge to 2008 FISA amendments).
Short Circuits. Berman has a post on some recent action in the Tenth Circuit on ACCA (including a defense win we flagged last fortnight) that might provide some grist for vagueness challenges to the statute. Onto the defense wins for this week:
• U.S. v. Weatherspoon (3d Cir.) (§3582 does not bar successive petitions). (H/T)
• U.S. v. Begin
(3d Cir.) (failure to address variance argument in §2422(b) attempt to
induce statutory rape case rendered sentence procedurally unreasonable).
(H/T)
• Green v. Addison
(10th Cir.) (§2254) (unpub'd) (district court should have held
evidentiary hearing in collateral attack of rape conviction, where state
court improperly treated claim that state court suborned perjury as
claim involving new evidence of actual innocence). (H/T)
• U.S. v. Roberts
(10th Cir.) (§2255) (unpub'd) (defendant was permitted to amend §2255
motion to add IAC claim, where he made showing that counsel should have
argued for fewer criminal history points added because of consolidation
of cases). (H/T)
For the Bookworms - New books and scholarly articles of note.
• "Self Defense and the Suspicion Heuristic," L. Song Richardson & Phillip Atiba Goff, Iowa L. Rev. 293 (SSRN)
(examines how unconscious stereotyping can lead to systematic and
predictable errors in judgments of criminality; though addressing such
stereotyping in the context of self defense, the topic suggests obvious
relevance of the discussion to reasonable suspicion analysis).
• "The Imprisoner's Dilemma: A Cost Benefit Approach to Incarceration," David Abrams, working paper (SSRN)
(using "more accurate causal estimates of general deterrence, specific
deterrence and incapacitation," argues that among other things, "[f]or
all crime categories, except robbery, reducing the scope of crimes
subject to incarceration yields a net benefit"). (H/T)
• Note, "Protecting Prisoners During Custodial Interrogations: The Road Forward after Howes v. Fields," Michelle Parilo, B.C. J. L. & Soc. Just. (SSRN).
• "Mental Illness, Police Power Interventions, and the Expressive Functions of Punishment," Robert F. Schopp, working paper (SSRN)
(discusses the significance of the expressive functions of criminal
punishment in selecting the most justified institutional structures for
interventions intended to prevent impaired individuals from harming
others).
• "Legal Vices and Civic Virtue: Vice
Crimes, Republicanism and the Corruption of Lawfulness," Ekow N. Yankah,
Crim. L. & Phil. (SSRN) (argues that criminal regulation of vice as a means of moral instruction is misconceived).
• The Supreme Court and the Fourth Amendment's Exclusionary Rule, Tracey Macklin (Amazon)
(based on analysis of Supreme Court opinions and archival research of
the justices' private papers, provides a comprehensive discussion of the
reasoning and motivation behind the Court's Fourth Amendment
decisions). (H/T)
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