McCoy v. Louisiana

Docket No.	Op. Below	Argument	Opinion	Vote	Author	Term
16-8255	La.	Jan 17, 2018 Tr.Aud.	May 14, 2018	6-3	Ginsburg	OT 2017

Holding: The Sixth Amendment guarantees a defendant the right to choose the objective of his defense and to insist that his counsel refrain from admitting guilt, even when counsel’s experienced-based view is that confessing guilt offers the defendant the best chance to avoid the death penalty.

Judgment: Reversed and remanded, 6-3, in an opinion by Justice Ginsburg on May 14, 2018. Justice Alito filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Thomas and Gorsuch joined.

SCOTUSblog Coverage

The Annual: OT2017 in Review (First Mondays)
OT2017 #25: "The Way The Chief Loves Mootness" (First Mondays)
Opinion analysis: Court rules for death-row inmate whose lawyer conceded guilt (Updated) (Amy Howe)
Argument analysis: Concern for death-row inmate's rights likely to trump line-drawing worries (Amy Howe)
OT2017 #11: "Numbing Effect" (First Mondays)
Argument preview: When a defendant in a capital case says “not guilty,” can his attorney say “guilty”? (Amy Howe)
Justices release January calendar (Amy Howe)
Justices issue orders from "long conference" (UPDATED) (Amy Howe)

Date	Proceedings and Orders (key to color coding)
Mar 06 2017	Petition for a writ of certiorari and motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis filed. (Response due April 10, 2017)
Mar 24 2017	Brief of respondent Louisiana in opposition filed.
Apr 10 2017	Brief amicus curiae of The Ethics Bureau at Yale filed.
Apr 10 2017	Brief amici curiae of The Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, et al. filed.
Apr 11 2017	Reply of petitioner Robert Leroy McCoy filed. (Distributed)
Apr 13 2017	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of April 28, 2017.
Apr 24 2017	Record Requested.
Jun 12 2017	Record received from the Supreme Court of Louisiana (6 boxes).
Jun 15 2017	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of September 25, 2017.
Sep 28 2017	Motion to proceed in forma pauperis and petition for a writ of certiorari GRANTED limited to Question 1 presented by the petition.
Nov 13 2017	Brief of petitioner Robert L.McCoy filed (to be corrected and reprinted).
Nov 13 2017	Joint appendix filed (2 volumes). (Statement of costs filed)
Nov 13 2017	Brief of petitioner Robert L. McCoy filed (Corrected brief received 1/10/18). (Distributed)
Nov 17 2017	SET FOR ARGUMENT ON Wednesday, January 17, 2018
Nov 17 2017	Brief amicus curiae of Cato Institute filed.
Nov 20 2017	Brief amicus curiae of The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers filed.
Nov 20 2017	Brief amici curiae of Ten Law School Professors and the Ethics Bureau at Yale filed. (Distributed)
Nov 20 2017	Brief amicus curiae of The Criminal Bar Association of England & Wales filed. (Distributed)
Nov 20 2017	Brief amicus curiae of American Bar Association filed. (Distributed)
Nov 22 2017	CIRCULATED.
Dec 13 2017	Brief of respondent Louisiana filed. (Distributed)
Dec 18 2017	Record requested from the Supreme Court of Louisiana.
Dec 20 2017	Brief amici curiae of States of Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, Nevada, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming filed. (Distributed)
Jan 05 2018	Reply of petitioner Robert L.McCoy filed. (Distributed)
Jan 17 2018	Argued. For petitioner: Seth P. Waxman, Washington, D. C. For respondent: Elizabeth Murrill, Solicitor General of Louisiana, Baton Rouge, La.
May 14 2018	Judgment REVERSED and case REMANDED. Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Alito, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Thomas and Gorsuch, JJ., joined.
Jun 15 2018	JUDGMENT ISSUED.
Jun 15 2018	MANDATE ISSUED.
Jun 20 2018	Record returned to the Supreme Court of Louisiana (6 boxes).

Featured Posts

Opinion analysis: Justices uphold arbitration exemption for transportation workers in rare victory for arbitration opponents – Ronald Mann

Argument analysis: When is the government not really the government for immunity from tort liability? – Gregory Sisk

Argument analysis: Quiescent bench dubious about broad fee awards in copyright cases – Ronald Mann
Email Digest Sign-Up
Receive a daily email digest from Feedburner by entering your email.
Merits Case Pages and Archives

Archives

or

This Week at the Court
The Supreme Court released additional orders from the January 11 conference on Monday; the justices called for the views of the U.S. solicitor general in CSX Transportation Inc. v. Alabama Department of Revenue, Alabama Department of Revenue v. CSX Transportation Inc. and Toshiba Corp. v. Automotive Industries Pension Trust Fund.
On Tuesday, the justices released their opinions in New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira and Stokeling v. United States.
On Monday, the justices heard oral argument in Thacker v. Tennessee Valley Authority and Rimini Street Inc. v. Oracle USA Inc.
On Tuesday, the justices heard oral argument in Home Depot U.S.A. Inc. v. Jackson and Azar v. Allina Health Services.
On Wednesday, the justices hear oral argument in Knick v. Township of Scott and Tennessee Wine & Spirits Retailers Association v. Blair.
On Friday, the justices meet for their January 18 conference.
Recent Decisions
- New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira A court should determine whether the Federal Arbitration Act’s Section 1 exclusion for disputes involving the “contracts of employment” of certain transportation workers applies before ordering arbitration; here, truck driver Dominic Oliveira’s independent contractor operating agreement with New Prime Inc. falls within that exception.
- Stokeling v. United States The Armed Career Criminal Act’s elements clause encompasses a robbery offense that, like Florida’s law, requires the criminal to overcome the victim’s resistance.
- Culbertson v. Berryhill The Social Security Act’s fee cap of 25 percent of past-due benefits imposed on attorneys who successfully represent Title II benefit claimants in court proceedings applies only to fees for court representation and not to aggregate fees for both court and agency representation.
- Henry Schein Inc. v. Archer and White Sales Inc. The “wholly groundless” exception to the general rule that courts must enforce contracts that delegate threshold arbitrability questions to an arbitrator, not a court, is inconsistent with the Federal Arbitration Act and Supreme Court precedent.
- City of Escondido, California v. Emmons The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit failed to conduct the analysis required by Supreme Court precedents in determining whether two Escondido police officers were entitled to qualified immunity.
- Shoop v. Hill Because Danny Hill’s intellectual disability claim must be evaluated based solely on holdings of the Supreme Court that were clearly established at the time the state-court decisions were rendered, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit’s reliance on Moore v. Texas -- which was handed down much later -- was plainly improper.
see all this term’s cases »
Current Relists
- Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda Whether the prohibition in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1), against employment discrimination “because of . . . sex” encompasses discrimination based on an individual’s sexual orientation.
- Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia Whether discrimination against an employee because of sexual orientation constitutes prohibited employment discrimination “because of . . . sex” within the meaning of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2.
- Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc. (1) Whether a state may require health-care facilities to dispose of fetal remains in the same manner as other human remains, i.e., by burial or cremation; and (2) whether a state may prohibit abortions motivated solely by the race, sex or disability of the fetus and require abortion doctors to inform patients of the prohibition.
More Petitions »
Major Cases
- Lamone v. Benisek
  In case in which the plaintiffs allege that a Maryland congressional district was gerrymandered to retaliate against them for their political views: (1) whether the various legal claims articulated by the three-judge district court are unmanageable; (2) whether the three-judge district court erred when, in granting plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, it resolved disputes of material fact as to multiple elements of plaintiffs’ claims, failed to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, and treated as “undisputed” evidence that is the subject of still-unresolved hearsay and other evidentiary objections; and (3) whether the three-judge district court abused its discretion in entering an injunction despite the plaintiffs’ years-long delay in seeking injunctive relief, rendering the remedy applicable to at most one election before the next decennial census necessitates another redistricting.
- Kisor v. Wilkie
  Whether the Supreme Court should overrule Auer v. Robbins and Bowles v. Seminole Rock & Sand Co., which direct courts to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of its own ambiguous regulation.
- Department of Commerce v. U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
  Whether, in an action seeking to set aside agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 701 et seq., a district court may order discovery outside the administrative record to probe the mental processes of the agency decisionmaker—including by compelling the testimony of high-ranking Executive Branch officials—when there is no evidence that the decisionmaker disbelieved the objective reasons in the administrative record, irreversibly prejudged the issue, or acted on a legally forbidden basis.
- Rucho v. Common Cause
  (1) Whether plaintiffs have standing to press their partisan gerrymandering claims; (2) whether plaintiffs’ partisan gerrymandering claims are justiciable; and (3) whether North Carolina’s 2016 congressional map is, in fact, an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
- The American Legion v. American Humanist Association
  (1) Whether a 93-year-old memorial to the fallen of World War I is unconstitutional merely because it is shaped like a cross; (2) whether the constitutionality of a passive display incorporating religious symbolism should be assessed under the tests articulated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, Van Orden v. Perry, Town of Greece v. Galloway or some other test; and (3) whether, if the test from Lemon v. Kurtzman applies, the expenditure of funds for the routine upkeep and maintenance of a cross-shaped war memorial, without more, amounts to an excessive entanglement with religion in violation of the First Amendment.
- Gamble v. United States
  Whether the Supreme Court should overrule the “separate sovereigns” exception to the double jeopardy clause.
see all this term’s cases »
Recent Special Features
Statistical Snapshot

Cases argued 41

Cases decided 9

Summary reversals 2

Merits cases granted to date 73

see all »
Live Blog Archives
See all
Twitter Feed

Tweets by @SCOTUSblog

Full Calendar Submit Event

Jan. 2019

Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
		1 Holiday	2	3	4 Conference	5
6	7 Orders MERCK SHARP & DOHME CORP. V. ALBRECHT (17-290) OBDUSKEY V. MCCARTHY & HOLTHUS LLP (17-1307)	8 HERRERA V. WYOMING (17-532) FOURTH ESTATE PUBLIC BENEFIT CORP. V. WALL-STREET.COM, LLC (17-571) Opinions	9 FRANCHISE TAX BOARD OF CALIFORNIA V. HYATT (17-1299)	10	11 Conference	12
13	14 Orders THACKER V. TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY (17-1201) RIMINI STREET INC. V. ORACLE USA INC. (17-1625)	15 HOME DEPOT U.S.A. INC. V. JACKSON (17-1471) AZAR V. ALLINA HEALTH SERVICES (17-1484) Opinions	16 KNICK V. TOWNSHIP OF SCOTT, PENNSYLVANIA (17-647) TENNESSEE WINE AND SPIRITS RETAILERS ASSOCIATION V. BLAIR (18-96)	17	18 Conference	19
20	21 Holiday	22 Orders	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

Orders/Opinions
Arguments
Conferences

Events
Holidays
Multiple

Download our App in the Apple Store
First Mondays see all
Videos see all

Justice Sotomayor at Harvard

On November 13, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and Judge Susan Carney of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit presided over the final round of the 2018 Ames Moot Court Competition at Harvard Law School.

Peabody Award
Awarded the Peabody Award for excellence in electronic media.
Sigma Delta Chi
Awarded the Sigma Delta Chi deadline reporting award for online coverage of the Affordable Care Act decision.
National Press Club Award
Awarded the National Press Club's Breaking News Award for coverage of the Affordable Care Act decision.
Silver Gavel Award
Awarded the Silver Gavel Award by the American Bar Association for fostering the American public’s understanding of the law and the legal system.
American Gavel Award
Awarded the American Gavel Award for Distinguished Reporting About the Judiciary to recognize the highest standards of reporting about courts and the justice system.
Webby Award
Awarded the Webby Award for excellence on the internet.

Cases argued	41
Cases decided	9
Summary reversals	2
Merits cases granted to date	73

Editor's Note :

McCoy v. Louisiana

SCOTUSblog Coverage

Featured Posts

Opinion analysis: Justices uphold arbitration exemption for transportation workers in rare victory for arbitration opponents – Ronald Mann

Argument analysis: When is the government not really the government for immunity from tort liability? – Gregory Sisk

Argument analysis: Quiescent bench dubious about broad fee awards in copyright cases – Ronald Mann

Email Digest Sign-Up

Merits Case Pages and Archives

Recent Decisions

Current Relists

Conference of January 11, 2019

Major Cases

Recent Special Features

Live Blog Archives

Jan. 2019

Download our App in the Apple Store

First Mondays see all

Videos see all

Peabody Award

Sigma Delta Chi

National Press Club Award

Silver Gavel Award

American Gavel Award

Webby Award