Today’s Re-Lists (and Friday’s Conference)
Three cases that were slated for consideration at last Monday’s conference have been re-listed for the upcoming conference on Friday, October 5:
No. 06-1616, Chester v. Texas, a capital case presenting the question whether the “Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’ standard for determining mental retardation of a capital defendant violates the Court’s decision in Atkins v. Virginia”;
No. 06-1716, Rockstead v. City of Crystal Lake, presenting the question whether “the Court should reconsider the state-litigation requirement of Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City . . . whereby a Fifth Amendment takings claim is not ripe in federal court until the landowner first seeks and is denied compensation in state court”; and
No. 06-11488, Ordinola v. Hackman, a case out of the Fourth Circuit involving the political offense exception to extradition. Petitioner, a Peruvian national and former member of a special paramilitary group formed to fight the Shining Path terrorist group, is accused of murdering noncombatants on four separate occasions.
You can access the cert. papers for both Chester and Rockstead here.
Also, we’ve learned that last week Don Verrilli, counsel to the petitioner in No. 07-303, Taylor v. Crawford, filed a motion (available here) to expedite consideration of the petition in his case, which – like No. 07-5439, Baze v. Rees, in which the Court granted cert. last week – deals with the constitutionality of a state’s lethal injection protocol. The motion to expedite is also expected to be considered at Friday’s conference.
Two other cases set for conference on Sept. 24 were also absent from the orders list today: No. 06-10345, Johnson v. Nevada, and No. 06-10347, Thomas v. Nevada. Both are capital cases on the IFP docket, and the lower court decisions rejected Confrontation Clause challenges to the admissibility of testimonial hearsay to prove statutory aggravating factors in capital sentencing hearings. I suppose we should know soon whether they have been re-listed for an upcoming conference.
Comment by Rob Owen — October 1, 2007 @ 9:35 pm
Neither of the dockets for those cases indicates that the case has been distributed for Friday’s conference, so it appears that they are instead being held for some other case.
Comment by Amy Howe — October 2, 2007 @ 9:33 am