McFadden v. United States

Docket No.	Op. Below	Argument	Opinion	Vote	Author	Term
14-378	4th Cir.	Apr 21, 2015 Tr.Aud.	Jun 18, 2015	9-0	Thomas	OT 2014

Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the petitioner in this case.

Holding: Section 841(a)(1) of the Controlled Substances Act, which makes it unlawful knowingly to manufacture, distribute, or possess with intent to distribute controlled substances, requires the government to establish that the defendant knew he was dealing with a substance regulated under the Controlled Substances Act or the Controlled Substance Analogue Enforcement Act of 1986.

Judgment: Vacated and remanded, 9-0, in an opinion by Justice Thomas on June 18, 2015. Chief Justice Roberts filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgement.

SCOTUSblog Coverage

Opinion analysis: The required mens rea for federal narcotics offenses is getting clearer (Rory Little)
A “view” from the Courtroom: A bonus day for opinions (Mark Walsh)
Argument analysis: Is the government pushing a bridge too far regarding federal drug prosecutions? (Rory Little)
Argument preview: The tricky mens rea requirements for federal narcotics cases (Rory Little)

Date	Proceedings and Orders (key to color coding)
Aug 18 2014	Application (14A199) to extend the time to file a petition for a writ of certiorari from September 15, 2014 to October 14, 2014, submitted to The Chief Justice.
Aug 21 2014	Application (14A199) granted by The Chief Justice extending the time to file until October 14, 2014.
Oct 2 2014	Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due November 3, 2014)
Oct 30 2014	Order extending time to file response to petition to and including December 3, 2014.
Nov 20 2014	Order further extending time to file response to petition to and including December 15, 2014.
Dec 15 2014	Brief of respondent United States in opposition filed. (To be reprinted).
Dec 17 2014	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of January 9, 2015.
Dec 19 2014	Reply of petitioner Stephen Dominick McFadden filed. (Distributed)
Jan 12 2015	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of January 16, 2015.
Jan 16 2015	Petition GRANTED.
Mar 2 2015	Joint appendix filed. (Statement of costs filed.)
Mar 2 2015	Brief of petitioner Stephen Dominick McFadden filed.
Mar 5 2015	Consent to the filing of amicus curiae briefs, in support of either party or of neither party, received from counsel for the petitioner.
Mar 6 2015	SET FOR ARGUMENT ON Monday, April 21, 2015
Mar 9 2015	Brief amicus curiae of National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers filed.
Mar 9 2015	Brief amici curiae of Expert Forensic Scientists filed.
Mar 16 2015	CIRCULATED.
Mar 17 2015	Record requested from U.S.C.A. 4th Circuit.
Mar 17 2015	Record received from U.S.C.A. 4th Circuit is electronic and located on PACER. Also sent electronically from the 4th Circuit a SEALED Appendix.
Apr 1 2015	Brief of respondent the United States filed. (Distributed)
Apr 10 2015	Reply of petitioner Stephen Dominick McFadden filed. (Distributed)
Apr 21 2015	Argued. For petitioner: Kevin K. Russell, Bethesda, Md. For respondent: Sarah E. Harrington, Assistant to the Solicitor General, Department of Justice, Washington, D. C.
Jun 18 2015	Judgment VACATED and case REMANDED. Thomas, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Roberts, C. J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
Jul 20 2015	JUDGMENT ISSUED.

Featured Posts

Practice Pointer: Digging into DIGs – Kevin Russell

Opinion analysis: The meaning of consent to class arbitration – Charlotte Garden

Argument analysis: Justices close out 2018 term with a spirited discussion about sanctions for violating bankruptcy discharge – Ronald Mann
Sponsored by Casetext
SCOTUStalk see all
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 orders from the April 18 conference on Monday; the justices agreed to decide Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, consolidated with Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, CITGO Asphalt Refining Co. v. Frescati Shipping Co., Ltd., and Barton v. Barr. The justices also called for the views of the U.S. solicitor general in Putnam Investments, LLC v. Brotherston.
On Tuesday, the justices dismissed Emulex Corp. v. Varjabedian as improvidently granted.
On Wednesday, the justices released their opinion in Lamps Plus Inc. v. Varela.
On Monday, the justices heard oral argument in Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media and Fort Bend County, Texas v. Davis.
On Tuesday morning, the justices heard oral argument in Department of Commerce v. New York. On Tuesday afternoon, they heard argument in Mitchell v. Wisconsin and Rehaif v. United States.
On Wednesday, the justices heard oral argument in Quarles v. United States and Taggart v. Lorenzen.
On Friday, the justices meet for their April 26 conference; John Elwood compiles the petitions relisted for this 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
- Lamps Plus Inc. v. Varela Under the Federal Arbitration Act, an ambiguous agreement cannot provide the necessary contractual basis for concluding that the parties agreed to submit to class arbitration.
- Biestek v. Berryhill A vocational expert’s refusal to provide private market-survey data during a Social Security disability benefits hearing upon the applicant’s request does not categorically preclude the testimony from counting as “substantial evidence” in federal court under 42 U. S. C. §405(g).
- Bucklew v. Precythe Baze v. Rees and Glossip v. Gross govern all Eighth Amendment challenges alleging that a method of execution inflicts unconstitutionally cruel pain; Russell Bucklew’s as-applied challenge to Missouri’s single-drug execution protocol -- that it would cause him severe pain because of his particular medical condition -- fails to satisfy the Baze-Glossip test.
see all this term’s cases »
Current Relists
- 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.
- City of Newport Beach, California v. Vos (1) Whether Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires law enforcement officers to provide accommodations to an armed, violent and mentally ill suspect in the course of bringing the suspect into custody; (2) whether, under the Fourth Amendment “totality of the circumstances” analysis for assessing the reasonableness of force used against a suspect who attacks law enforcement officers, a court must take into account allegedly unreasonable police conduct that took place before the use of force, but foreseeably created the need to use that force; and (3) whether, under the Fourth Amendment’s analysis for use of force, a law enforcement officer’s interest in using deadly force against a suspect threatening an officer’s life is diminished if the assailant is mentally ill.
- Dahne v. Richey Whether prison inmates have a First Amendment right to include threatening, abusive and irrelevant language in grievances.
More Petitions »
Recent Special Features
Statistical Snapshot

Cases argued 70

Cases decided 32

Summary reversals 4

Merits cases granted to date 73

see all »
Live Blog Archives
See all
Twitter Feed

Tweets by @SCOTUSblog

Full Calendar Submit Event

Apr. 2019

Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
	1 Orders Opinions	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12 Conference	13
14	15 Orders IANCU V. BRUNETTI (18-302) EMULEX CORP. V. VARJABEDIAN (18-459)	16 PARKER DRILLING MANAGEMENT SERVICES V. NEWTON (18-389) NORTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE V. KAESTNER FAMILY TRUST (18-457)	17 UNITED STATES V. DAVIS (18-431) MCDONOUGH V. SMITH (18-485)	18 Conference	19	20
21	22 Orders FOOD MARKETING INSTITUTE V. ARGUS LEADER MEDIA (18-481) FORT BEND COUNTY, TEXAS V. DAVIS (18-525)	23 MITCHELL V. WISCONSIN (18-6210) REHAIF V. UNITED STATES (17-9560) DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE V. NEW YORK (18-966) Opinions	24 QUARLES V. UNITED STATES (17-778) TAGGART V. LORENZEN (18-489) Opinions	25	26 Conference	27
28	29 Orders	30

Orders/Opinions
Arguments
Conferences

Events
Holidays
Multiple

Download our App in the Apple Store
Videos see all

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.

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

McFadden v. United States

SCOTUSblog Coverage

Featured Posts

Practice Pointer: Digging into DIGs – Kevin Russell

Opinion analysis: The meaning of consent to class arbitration – Charlotte Garden

Argument analysis: Justices close out 2018 term with a spirited discussion about sanctions for violating bankruptcy discharge – Ronald Mann

Sponsored by Casetext

SCOTUStalk see all

Email Digest Sign-Up

Merits Case Pages and Archives

Major Cases

Recent Decisions

Current Relists

Conference of April 26, 2019

Recent Special Features

Live Blog Archives

Apr. 2019

Download our App in the Apple Store

Videos see all

Peabody Award

Sigma Delta Chi

National Press Club Award

Silver Gavel Award

American Gavel Award

Webby Award