Round-Up
Marcia Coyle has this article at Law.com previewing several of the high-profile cases already on the Court’s docket for the coming Term.
In today’s L.A. Times, David Savage has a piece here discussing two of this Term’s criminal cases that arise from opinions by Judge Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit. The cases that the Court will hear are Carey v. Musladin (Question Presented: did the 9th Circuit exceed its authority by overturning Musladin’s state conviction of murder on the ground that the courtroom spectators included three family members of the victim who wore buttons depicting the deceased?) and Ornoski v. Belmontes (Questions Presented: (1) Does Boyde v. California confirm the constitutional sufficiency of California’s “unadorned factor (k)” instruction when a defendant presents mitigating evidence of his background and character which relates to, or has a bearing on, his future prospects as a life prisoner? (2) Does the 9th Circuit’s holding, that California’s “unadorned factor (k)” instruction is constitutionally inadequate to inform jurors they may consider “forwardlooking” mitigation evidence constitute a “new rule” under Teague v. Lane?). Judge Reinhardt’s opinion in the Musladin case can be found here, and in the Belmontes case here.
In a post at Crime & Consequences here, Kent Scheidegger picks out and summarizes the criminal cases on Tom’s “Petitions to Watch” list.
Sentencing Law and Policy discusses a new ruling in the matter of Hill v. McDonough from the 11th Circuit (the Supreme Court weighed in on this matter last June with this opinion). UPDATE: Lyle has more on this case in the post above.
Mr. Amar won’t say it, but I will: Reinhardt is a bad judge. For whatever reason, he is biased towards criminals, and he will twist the law to give effect to his bias. It is an affront to the people of the states that make up the Ninth Circuit that this lawless judge gets to review the criminal judgments of those states.
The Musladin opinion is a joke. And the Belmontes case is an insult. In Belmontes, Reinhardt characterized the murder as “a robbery gone wrong” and one that did not have “especially heinous” aggravating circumstances. I’m sure the victim, as she was fighting for her life under the repeated blows of a barbell, was in abject terror. It is troubling, to say the least, that a federal circuit judge could so off-handedly discount the awfulness of that crime.
Comment by federalist — September 18, 2006 @ 1:32 pm