Williams v. Pennsylvania

Docket No.	Op. Below	Argument	Opinion	Vote	Author	Term
15-5040	Pa.	Feb 29, 2016 Tr.Aud.	Jun 9, 2016	5-3	Kennedy	OT 2015

Holding: Under the Due Process Clause, there is an impermissible risk of actual bias when a judge earlier had significant, personal involvement as a prosecutor in a critical decision regarding the defendant’s case.

Judgment: Vacated and remanded, 5-3, in an opinion by Justice Kennedy on June 9, 2016. Chief Justice Roberts filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justice Alito joined. Justice Thomas filed a dissenting opinion.

SCOTUSblog Coverage

Opinion analysis: Another step toward constitutionalizing recusal obligations (Richard M. Re)
Argument analysis: Seeking a recusal rule that the Justices can live with (Richard M. Re)
Argument preview: When must a prosecutor-turned-judge recuse from a capital case? (Richard M. Re)

Date	Proceedings and Orders (key to color coding)
May 7 2015	Application (14A1161) to extend the time to file a petition for a writ of certiorari from May 19, 2015 to July 18, 2015, submitted to Justice Alito.
May 12 2015	Application (14A1161) granted by Justice Alito extending the time to file until June 18, 2015.
Jun 12 2015	Petition for a writ of certiorari and motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis filed. (Response due July 31, 2015)
Jul 24 2015	Brief of respondent Pennsylvania in opposition filed.
Aug 7 2015	Reply of petitioner Terrance Williams filed.
Aug 13 2015	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of September 28, 2015.
Oct 1 2015	Motion to proceed in forma pauperis and petition for a writ of certiorari GRANTED.
Nov 6 2015	The time to file the joint appendix and petitioner's brief on the merits is extended to and including November 30, 2015.
Nov 6 2015	The time to file respondent's brief on the merits is extended to and including January 13, 2016.
Nov 10 2015	Consent to the filing of amicus curiae briefs in support of either party or of neither party received from counsel for the petitioner.
Nov 13 2015	Consent to the filing of amicus curiae briefs in support of either party or of neither party received from counsel for the respondent.
Nov 30 2015	Joint appendix filed. (Statement of costs filed.)
Nov 30 2015	Brief of petitioner Terrance Williams filed.
Dec 7 2015	Brief amicus curiae of Constitutional Accountability Center filed.
Dec 7 2015	Brief amici curiae of Former Judges with Prosecutorial Experience filed.
Dec 7 2015	Brief amici curiae of The Ethics Bureau at Yale, et al. filed.
Dec 7 2015	Brief amicus curiae of The American Bar Association filed.
Dec 7 2015	Brief amici curiae of Former Appellate Court Jurists filed.
Dec 7 2015	Brief amici curiae of Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, and Justice at Stake filed.
Dec 7 2015	Brief amici curiae of The American Civil Liberties Union, and The ACLU of Pennsylvania filed.
Dec 7 2015	Brief amicus curiae of The American Academy of Appellate Lawyers filed.
Dec 23 2015	SET FOR ARGUMENT ON Monday, February 29, 2016
Jan 8 2016	Record received from the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania Eastern District. (2 Boxes)
Jan 13 2016	Brief of respondent Pennsylvania filed. (Distributed)
Jan 15 2016	CIRCULATED.
Feb 11 2016	Record received from the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. (2 Boxes)
Feb 12 2016	Reply of petitioner Terrance Williams filed. (Distributed)
Feb 29 2016	Argued. For petitioner: Stuart B. Lev, Assistant Federal Defender, Philadelphia, Pa. For respondent: Ronald Eisenberg, Deputy District Attorney, Philadelphia, Pa.
Jun 9 2016	Judgment VACATED and case REMANDED. Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Roberts, C. J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Alito, J., joined. Thomas, J., filed a dissenting opinion.
Jun 9 2016	MANDATE ISSUED.
Jul 12 2016	JUDGMENT ISSUED
Jul 12 2016	MANDATE ISSUED
Aug 16 2016	Records from the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has been returned. (4 Boxes)

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

Williams v. Pennsylvania

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