Smith v. United States
Petition for certiorari denied on January 13, 2020
Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is counsel on a cert-stage amicus brief in support of the petitioners in this case.
Issues: (1) Whether the government makes a good-faith
effort to obtain a witness’s presence at trial if it
curtails its search for that witness because it already
has the witness’s deposition testimony; (2) whether the government makes a good-faith
effort to obtain a witness’s presence at trial if it
forgoes an “easy” investigative step that it has “reason to believe” would procure the absent witness; and (3) whether a witness is “unavailable” if the government releases the witness from its custody without making any arrangements to secure the witness’s
presence at trial.
| Date | Proceedings and Orders (key to color coding) |
|---|
| Sep 18 2019 | Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due October 18, 2019) |
| Oct 09 2019 | Motion to extend the time to file a response from October 18, 2019 to November 18, 2019, submitted to The Clerk. |
| Oct 10 2019 | Motion to extend the time to file a response is granted and the time is extended to and including November 18, 2019. |
| Oct 10 2019 | Blanket Consent filed by Petitioner, Renado Smith, et al. |
| Oct 18 2019 | Brief amici curiae of Criminal Defense Organizations filed. |
| Oct 18 2019 | Brief amicus curiae of The Constitution Project at the Project On Government Oversight filed. |
| Oct 18 2019 | Brief amicus curiae of Florida Association for Criminal Defense Lawyers filed. |
| Oct 28 2019 | Motion to extend the time to file a response from November 18, 2019 to December 9, 2019, submitted to The Clerk. |
| Oct 29 2019 | Motion to extend the time to file a response is granted and the time is further extended to and including December 9, 2019. |
| Dec 09 2019 | Brief of respondent United States of America in opposition filed. |
| Dec 23 2019 | DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 1/10/2020. |
| Dec 23 2019 | Reply of petitioners Renado Smith, et al. filed. (Distributed) |
| Jan 13 2020 | Petition DENIED. |
