McCoy v. Louisiana

McCoy v. Louisiana

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Conference of May 16, 2019

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.

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: Court rejects issue preclusion in affirming Crow Tribe’s treaty hunting right – Gregory Ablavsky

Tom Goldstein and David Savage talk through abortion, precedent and the Supreme Court – SCOTUStalk

Justices grant bankruptcy petition – Amy Howe
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This Week at the Court
The Supreme Court released orders from the May 16 conference on Monday; the justices granted Ritzen Group Inc. v. Jackson Masonry, LLC.
On Monday, the justices released their opinions in Mission Product Holdings Inc. v. Tempnology, LLC, Herrera v. Wyoming and Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. v. Albrecht.
On Thursday, the justices meet for their May 23 conference.
Major Cases
- Department of Commerce v. New York
  (1) Whether the district court erred in enjoining the secretary of the Department of Commerce from reinstating a question about citizenship to the 2020 decennial census on the ground that the secretary’s decision violated the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 701 et seq; (2) whether, in an action seeking to set aside agency action under the APA, 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 -- without a strong showing that the decisionmaker disbelieved the objective reasons in the administrative record, irreversibly prejudged the issue, or acted on a legally forbidden basis; and (3) whether the secretary’s decision to add a citizenship question to the decennial census violated the enumeration clause of the U.S. Constitution.
- 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.
- 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 Decisions
- Herrera v. Wyoming Wyoming’s statehood did not abrogate the Crow Tribe’s 1868 federal treaty right to hunt on the “unoccupied lands of the United States”; the lands of the Bighorn National Forest did not become categorically “occupied” when the forest was created.
- Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. v. Albrecht “Clear evidence” that the Food and Drug Administration would not have approved a change to a drug’s label – thus pre-empting a state-law failure-to-warn claim – is evidence showing that the drug manufacturer fully informed the FDA of the justifications for the warning required by state law and that the FDA, in turn, informed the drug manufacturer that the FDA would not approve a change to the drug’s label to include that warning; the question of agency disapproval is primarily one of law for a judge to decide.
- Mission Product Holdings Inc. v. Tempnology, LLC A bankruptcy debtor’s rejection of an executory contract under 11 U.S.C. §365 has the same effect as a breach of that contract outside bankruptcy; such an act thus cannot rescind rights that the contract previously granted.
see all this term’s cases »
Current Relists
- al-Alwi v. Trump (1) Whether the government’s statutory authority to detain Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi has unraveled; (2) whether, alternatively, the government’s statutory authority to detain al-Alwi has expired because the conflict in which he was captured has ended; and (3) whether the Authorization for Use of Military Force authorizes, and the Constitution permits, detention of an individual who was not “engaged in an armed conflict against the United States” in Afghanistan prior to his capture.
- 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.
- Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc. Whether a state, consistent with the 14th Amendment, may require an ultrasound as part of informed consent at least 18 hours before an abortion.
More Petitions »
Recent Special Features
Statistical Snapshot

Cases argued 70

Cases decided 32

Summary reversals 4

Merits cases granted to date 73

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Justice Thomas at Pepperdine Law School

On March 30, Justice Clarence Thomas spoke with former clerk Brittney Lane Kubisch and Pepperdine University President-elect James Gash at Pepperdine University School of Law. Thomas told the audience that he had no plans to retire from the Supreme Court.

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

Cases argued	70
Cases decided	32
Summary reversals	4
Merits cases granted to date	73

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13
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16
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20
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23
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