Joseph v. United States
Petition for certiorari denied on December 1, 2014
Issue: Whether the Court should overturn the Eleventh Circuit’s “appellate procedural default” rule, which categorically prohibits the Eleventh Circuit from considering the merits of issues not raised in an appellant’s opening brief – under any standard of review – and as applied in criminal cases contravenes the retroactivity principle of Griffith v. Kentucky, and conflicts with the rules applied in every other circuit (all of which accord at least some form of merits review, where as here, the new issue is raised for the first time on appeal).