For the week of September 25, 2015
In this edition:
News to Use | Top of the Ninth |
SCOTUS Focus | Short Circuits | For the Bookworms
News to use
- Assets and Liabilities: The mobster Whitey Bulger secretly worked for the F.B.I. Or was it the other way around? (New Yorker) (H/T)
- All The Ways The Government Can Use Your Phone To Watch You (Nextgov) (H/T)
- Stuff Your Stupid Regulation: I Have the Constitution. (Carl Gunn) (H/T)
- U.S v. Flores (“Once again, an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of California overstepped the boundaries of permissible questioning and argument.” Still, no plain error—over J. Pregerson’s dissent) (warrant to retrieve Facebook info wasn’t stale or otherwise lacking probable cause, and wasn’t overbroad) (no abuse of discretion under 404(b) in admitting Facebook posts referring to defendant’s personal drug use, since they could reasonably be inferred as referring to drugs defendant was accused of transporting) (defendant’s efforts to have Facebook content deleted adequately supported obstruction enhancement under §3C1.1). UPDATE (9.28.15): More at Ninth Circuit Blog.
- Singh v. Lynch (immigration) (under REAL ID Act, IJ’s adverse credibility judgment may be based solely on background documents).
- As the 2015 Term opens: The Court’s unusual Eighth Amendment focus (SCOTUSblog). (H/T)
- SCALIA: I “wouldn't be surprised” if SCOTUS overturns the death penalty (Business Insider). (H/T)
- The Supreme Court’s Secret Power (New York Times op-ed). (H/T)
- U.S. v. Reyes-Santiago (1st Cir.) (defendant’s sentence was substantively unreasonable given disparate severity of his sentence compared to those of other co-defendants in drug conspiracy) (district court’s “uniquely harsh approach to drug quantity” in sentencing defendant was unsupported by its stated rationale; given clarity of that rationale, remedy was order for resentencing to bring defendant’s sentence in “appropriately align[ment]” with others, rather than for opportunity to adequately explain disparity). (H/T)
- U.S. v. Madrigal (5th Cir.) (driving newly registered older car between Houston and San Antonio was not reasonable suspicion that defendant was drug mule). (H/T)
- U.S. v. Ray (6th Cir.) (evidence was insufficient to sustain finding two guns possessed by defendant in violation of §924(c); shotgun in same room as drugs was unloaded, with shotgun shells across the room, and .22 rifle was in top shelf in closet in another bedroom) (if only there hadn’t been that loaded .38 in defendant’s jacket pocket along with 49 bags of crack cocaine …). (H/T)
- “Johnson v. United States and the Future of the Void-for-Vagueness Doctrine,” Carissa Byrne Hessick, 10 NYU J. L. & Liberty ___ (2015) (SSRN). (H/T)
- “Risk Assessment in Criminal Sentencing,” John Monahan & Jennifer L. Skeem, ___ Ann. Rev. Clinical Psych. ___ (forthcoming) (SSRN). (H/T)
- “Cruelty in Criminal Law: Four Conceptions,” Paulo Barrozo, 51-5 Crim. L. Bull. ___ (2015) (SSRN). (H/T)
- “Communication and Competence for Self-Representation,” E. Lea Johnston, 84 Fordham L. Rev. ___ (2016) (SSRN). (H/T)
- “ Reasonableness In and Out of Negligence Law,” Benjamin C. Zipursky, 163 U. Penn. L. Rev. 2131 (2015) (SSRN). (H/T)
- “Lessons from Gitmo,” Meghan J. Ryan, working paper (SSRN). (H/T)
- “White Claims to Illness and the Race-Based Medicalization of Addiction for Drug-Involved Former Prisoners,” Erin M Kerrison, 31 Harv. J. Racial & Ethnic Just. ___ (2015) (SSRN). (H/T)
- “Dead (and Innocent) Men Walking: Will Foster v. Chatman Mark the Beginning of the End for the Death Penalty?,” Adam Lamparello, working paper (SSRN). (H/T)
- “Symposium: Federal Sentencing Reform Ten Years after United States v. Booker,” 66 Hastings L.J. 1525–1600 (2015) (symposium page). (H/T)
- “The Hierarchical Influence of Courts of Appeals on District Courts,” Christina L. Boyd, 44 J. Legal Stud. 113 (2015) (EconPapers). (H/T)
