Court protects trial judges on juror dismissal
on Jun 4, 2007 at 10:20 am
The Supreme Court, dividing 5-4, ruled on Monday that federal courts must defer to trial courts in deciding whether to remove a juror from a death penalty trial because of the potential juror’s views about capital punishment. The Court said that the trial judge “is in a superior position” to make that decision. The case was Uttecht v. Brown (06-413), with the Court reversing the Ninth Circuit Court. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy announced the decision of the majority, and Justice John Paul Stevens responded from the bench for the dissenters.
In Sole v. Wyner (06-531), the Court ruled unanimously — in an opinion by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — that a party that files a civil rights case cannot recover attorneys’ fees under federal law if that party had won a preliminary injunction in the case, but ultimately lost the case on the merits.
In a widely splintered decision, but with all nine Justices joining in the result, the Court ruled that a company can be found to have willfully violated the federal truth-in-credit law not only if it knew it was violating that law, but also if it had acted with “reckless disregard” of its duties toward consumers. The ruling came in the consolidated cases of Safeco Insurance v. Burr (06-84) and GEICO v. Edo (06-100).
The fourth decision was a summary order to vacate Claiborne v. U.S. (06-5618), a Sentencing Guidelines case, because the petitioner died last week. (See the post below.)
