Results matching “Plata”

There are actually two appeals to the Supreme Court challenging the prisoner release order in California. The Prison Litigation Reform Act gives various people, including state legislators, standing to challenge such orders. The reason for this is to deal with possible collusion between prisoner advocates and the executive branch of government, which may want to put the squeeze on the legislative branch to pony up more funds (i.e., tax dollars) for prisons. In the California  case, a number of Republican legislators exercised their right to intervene.

In the governor's appeal, Schwarzenegger v. Plata, No. 09-1233, noted yesterday, the Court deferred consideration of a jurisdictional issue. The orders list did not mention California State Republican Legislator Intervenors v. Plata, No. 09-1232. Today, the online docket shows no order issued in that case, even though it was on the same conference. Not sure what's happening here.

On the Supreme Court's orders list for today is this order in Schwarzenegger v. Plata, No. 09-1233:

Further consideration of the question of jurisdiction is postponed to the hearing of the case on the merits.

Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog interprets this order as meaning that "the first issue up for review is whether a three-judge U.S. District Court had the authority even to issue an inmate release order."

I do not agree. [Update: Lyle has revised his post.] I think the jurisdictional question that the Court deferred is whether the Supreme Court has jurisdiction to review the order of a single-judge district court calling for the three-judge court to be convened. The Governator tried to appeal that order to the Ninth Circuit when it was issued, and the prisoners moved to dismiss on the ground the Ninth did not have jurisdiction.  The Ninth's docket in case 07-16361 says (emphasis added):

Order filed: The motions to exceed the page limit for aples' opposition and aplts' reply are granted. Aples' opposed motion to dismiss these appeals for lack of jurisdiction is granted....CITE. The district court orders from which aplts seek to appeal can be effectively reviewed following the entry of a final order by the three−judge district court. All other pending motions are denied as moot. DISMISSED.

The appeal referred to in the italicized language is the appeal now before the Supreme Court. In other words, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Supreme Court would have jurisdiction on the motion of the very people now denying the Court has jurisdiction.

Counsel for appellees win the chutzpah award of the week.

California Early Release Law Opposed By Victims' Group: The Associated Press reports that a victims' rights group has sued to block a state law that could allow thousands of inmates out of prison early.  The lawsuit, filed Monday in San Diego, claims the measure violates early-release restrictions in Proposition 9, which voters approved in 2008 to protect victims rights.  The inmate release law that took effect in January grants reduced prison terms to low-risk felons if they take job classes or earn high school equivalency diplomas. It is designed to save $500 million and ease prison overcrowding.  The lawsuit was filed by Crime Victims United of California.  SignOnSanDiego released on article today that can be found here.

Medical Parole Proposed to Cut Prison Costs: Sacramento Bee writer Susan Ferriss reports on an idea proposed by J. Clark Kelso, the federal court-appointed prison health receiver for Plata v. Schwarzenegger, suggesting that California could save millions of dollars a year if officials could grant parole to a handful of inmates who are comatose or severely incapacitated.  An aide in Kelso's office said that, conservatively, the prison system could save $213 million over five years by paroling just 32 inmates identified as severely incapacitated.  "These people are not even capable of realizing they're being punished," said Kelso aide Luis Patino.  "Society becomes the victim, because it's paying the cost." Last year, Governor Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Brown petitioned U.S. District Judge Henderson to replace Kelso.  The judge denied California's request.

"Militia Charged With Plotting to Murder Officers": New York Times writers Nick Bunkley and Charlie Savage report on a militant group compromised of nine individuals, calling themselves the Hutaree, indicted Monday for plotting to kill law enforcement officers in hopes of inciting an antigovernment uprising.  The court filings said the group planned to kill an unidentified law enforcement officer and then bomb the funeral caravan using improvised explosive devices based on designs used against American troops by insurgents in Iraq. The members of the group could face a maximum penalty of life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge, attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.

At the top of today's orders list is this order in the appeal of Schwarzenegger v. Plata and a companion case:

The appeals are dismissed for want of jurisdiction. The Court takes note that a further order has been entered in this case, but that order is not the subject of these appeals. It is also noted that the district court has stayed its further order pending review by this Court.

Understanding what the Court did and did not decide (mostly the latter) takes a bit of background.

The Supreme Court orders list is here. The controversial Abu-Jamal case is vacated and remanded to the Third Circuit to reconsider in light of Smith v. Spisak. On the WaPo site is this AP story. The headline writer refers to Abu-Jamal as a "suspect."

The Court also sent a California case, Patrick v. Smith, back to the Ninth Circuit to reconsider in light of the high court's spanking of the Ninth in McDaniel v. Brown.  Anyone care to bet that the Ninth will say Brown has no bearing on Smith only to be reversed by the Supreme Court? We've seen that scenario a time or two.

Attached to the order list are opinions in summary dispositions of Presley v. Georgia, on exclusion of the public from voir dire, and Wellons v. Hall, previously noted here, on a federal habeas claim where the facts had been insufficiently developed in state court. Wellons is remanded for reconsideration in light of Cone v. Bell.

The court turned down the California prisoner case, Schwarzenegger v. Plata, "for want of jurisdiction." I'll have more on that in a separate post.

The Supreme Court's orders list from today's conference is available on SCOTUSblog but not, as of 2:00 pm PST, on the Court's own web site.

All five cases granted are civil. Conspicuously absent is Schwarzenegger v. Plata, the big California let-em-all-out case. Usually when the Court releases a list of cases accepted on Friday, the list at the beginning of the following week* is all denials. We'll have to wait and see whether the Governator's case is denied or relisted. There have been further developments in the lower court, and the appellant just filed a second supplemental brief yesterday, so possibly they took it off the calendar to give the opposing party a chance to respond.

*Tuesday next week because Monday is a holiday.

The SCOTUSblog post on Schwarzenegger v. Plata noted in today's Blog Scan has a version of the Questions Presented that may be a bit confusing. The full text of the QP from the Jurisdictional Statement is after the jump.

Supreme Court Schedules:  The U. S. Supreme Court will hold a private conference tomorrow to discuss pending petitions for ceritorari.  Today, SCOTUSblog's Erin Miller posted its "Petitions to Watch" for the conference, in addition to a rare "Appeals to Watch."  The "Appeals to Watch" tomorrow involve the early release of thousands of California prisoners in the cases Schwarzenegger v. Plata and California State Republican Legislator Intervenors v. Plata.  Kent blogged back in December that the Court was likely to hear the case, so don't be surprised if the appeals are at the top of the Court's orders list.  The Court also released its oral arguments calendar for March 2010.  The D. C. Circuit's detainee case, Kiyemba v. Obama, will be argued March 23rd, and a "second successive" petition question will be addressed on March 24th in Magwood v. Culliver.  

Hollingsworth v. Perry - Lower Courts Can't Fudge Procedural Rules:   At Volokh Conspiracy, Orrin Kerr comments on a theme he finds running throughout the Supreme Court's opinions in Hollingsworth v. Perry and Bush v. Gore.  Kerr believes that yesterday's opinion in California's Prop. 8 case reflects the Court's objection "lower court or state court judges intentionally fudging procedural rules to help one side in very high-profile litigation that implicates the political process."  He writes that the Court invoked this principle once before in Bush v. Gore, a case also involving lawyers Ted Olson and David Boies.  In that case, the Florida Supreme Court was repeatedly fudging state election law to try to help out Al Gore in the 2000 election; and in Hollingsworth, the trial judge "was fudging the rules on broadcasting trials to try to give the plaintiffs a national forum to make the case for gay marriage."  Kerr writes this must have been an "odd deja vu moment" for Olson and Boies.

Surveillance Drones in Houston:  CrimProf Blog's editor, Kevin Cole, has posted a YouTube video describing the Houston Police Department's use of a small, unmanned aircraft that can be used for surveillance.  The Department is testing use of the drones, but some people are already questioning whether use constitutes a search for purposes of the Fourth Amendment.

The U.S. Supreme Court has scheduled for its January 15 conference its consideration of the jurisdictional statement in the California prison case, Schwarzenegger v. Plata, No. 09-416. There is very little to decide, as this is one of those rare cases where Congress has provided for an appeal rather than a writ of certiorari. It is not in the Court's discretion to take it or not. If they have jurisdiction, they have to take it. Howard Mintz has this story in the San Jose Mercury-News.

They probably want to take it anyway, though. On Sept. 11, they denied a stay but added this unusual note: "In denying the stay, the Court takes note of the fact that the three-judge district court has indicated that its final order will not be implemented until this Court has had the opportunity to review the district court's decree."

California Prison Case and the Supreme Court:  At PrawfsBlawg, Jonathan Simon, a Boalt Hall Law Professor, comments that the California inmate case, Plata v. Schwarzenegger, is likely to end up in the Supreme Court "sooner or later."  Referencing the Sacramento Bee's October 9th story on the inmates request to hold Governor Schwarzenegger in contempt, Simon focuses his post on some of the "legal flash points" that will spark interest if the case reaches the Supreme Court.  But the case is already there: Schwarzenegger v. Plata, No. 09-416.

Supreme Court Case Discussing Strickland in Deportation Context:  At SCOTUSblog, Anna Christensen previews tomorrow's Supreme Court argument in Padilla v. Kentucky, a case that will address whether a criminal defendant's guilty plea can be set aside because his defense counsel affirmatively misadvised him with regard to the deportation consequences of the plea.  In her post, Christensen goes through the parties' briefs, and discusses the United States amicus' position that misadvice with regard to immigration consequences can be ineffective assistance of counsel, so long it satisfies both the performance and prejudice prongs of Strickland (Padilla can't do this because evidence of guilt is overwhelming).  This position is contrary to the Kentucky Supreme Court's position that Strickland did not apply because Padilla's deportation constituted only a "collateral consequence" of his guilty plea.  Kentucky's brief supports this decision, and argues that after Brady v. United States and Boykin v. Alabama, trial courts have a duty only to ensure a defendant's understanding of the "direct" consequences of his guilty plea.  SCOTUSblog is likely to post transcripts of the oral arguments tomorrow.

Reconsidering Deference to Favor Uniform Rule of Law:  At Sentencing Law and Policy, Doug Berman posts the abstract of Marquette Law Professor Michael O'Hear's SSRN article, Appellate Review of Sentences: Reconsidering Deference.  According to the abstract, O'Hear believes it is "unfortunate" that appellate courts defer to the"sentencing competence of trial judges."  O'Hear writes this type of deference could hinder advancements in "uniformity and other rule-of-law values that are threatened by broad trial-court discretion."  Instead of relying on a sentencing judge's knowledge of the case and the procedure, O'Hear proposes "a sliding-scale approach to deference that strengthens the appellate role, but also accommodates localization values in the cases in which they are most salient."

Accuracy of Forensic Psychiatric Evaluators:  CrimProf Blog editors have posted on Douglas Mossman, MD's finding that "psychiatrists who evaluated mental competence from case files of 156 criminal defendants performed at a strikingly high level of accuracy."  According to the study's press release, the results of Dr. Mossman's study show that, on average, in "29 out of every 30 cases, the psychiatrists could distinguish competent defendants from incompetent defendants."  In reference to the results of his study, Quantifying the Accuracy of Forensic Examiners in the Absence of a "Gold Standard," Mossman is quoted as saying,"[t]hese results help us see how courtroom experts can be quite accurate in distinguishing competence from incompetence, but still reach different conclusions.  It's a matter of where experts draw the line on the issue of competence."  Mossman advocates adoption of a statistical techniques that "make it possible to estimate diagnostic accuracy without gold standards." 

NYT's Cooper Story: At TCS Daily, Lester Jackson has a critical review of a New York Times story on Judge Fletcher's dissent in the Kevin Cooper case in California.

Federal Judge Involvement in California Sentencing Reform:  At Sentencing Law and Policy, Doug Berman posts portions of "Assembly Invites Judges to Intervene," one of the editorials in today's Sacramento Bee.  The editorial reports that Governor Schwarzenneger has until Friday to submit his prison population reduction plan to the three-judge panel that decided Plata v. Schwarzenegger in early August.  The editorial is critical of the California Legislature's ability to pass "a feasible and timely proposal to reduce prison population before leaving town last Friday."  It calls the package finally sent to Governor Schwarzenegger's desk "watered down."  It also faults the Assembly for failing to include an " independent, professional sentencing commission" to rewrite sentencing laws in its plan.  CJLF has been critical of this proposal because it "creat[es[ a politically-appointed sentencing commission, it removes the ability of voters to hold elected representatives accountable for decisions that directly affect the safety of law-abiding Californians."  Another problem with the Bee's editorial is that it assumes the Legislature should disregard public safety and do exactly what three federal judges tell it to do. 

More on Obama Administration's Decision to Take "Prisoner-Photo Case to the Supremes":  At Wall Street Journal's Law Blog, Ashby Jones writes that "President Obama really really doesn't want the world to see certain photographs showing the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan."  Jones' basis his statement on yesterday's New York Times article by Adam Liptak detailing the Obama Administration's decision not ask the Supreme Court to block the release of photographs showing the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan last spring, and the "about-face" it made last month.  Last month, the Justice Department appealed and filed a brief asking the U. S. Supreme Court to hear the case.  (Other reports on the brief can be found here.)  Liptak writes that "the president's decision balanced two important interests," but Jones believes "the case will likely turn not on a clash of fundamental principles, but on a reading of a federal statute, the Freedom of Information Act, which makes disclosure of information held in the executive branch mandatory unless one of a list of exemptions applies."  Jones writes that this case is a tough one.  He likes the idea of exposing information, but "can see Obama's point: that such photos might be used selectively to create anti-American violence."

A Collector's Item for Supreme Court Junkies:  Tony Mauro reports on Blog of Legal Times that "[s]oon you'll be able to send mail with the image of a favorite Supreme Court justice affixed to the upper right corner."  On September 22, the U. S. Postal Service will debut four 44-cent stamps honoring justices Joseph Story, Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, and William Brennan Jr. at a dedication ceremony in the U. S. Supreme Court.  Mauro's post includes pictures of the stamps.  Just don't rush to your printer to use the stamps, the 44 cent marks have been struck-through on all of the pictures. 

Economic Commentary on "The Great California Prison Experiment:"  At Freakonomics Blog, Steven Levitt has posted his thoughts on the recent federal court decision to reduce California's prison population.  (h/t Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy).  Levitt's post discusses the results of a 1996 study he did on the "impact that changes in the prison population have on the crime rate."  To conduct his study Levitt looked at what happened to the crime rate after a case like California's, Plata/Coleman v. Schwarzenegger, was filed.  He found that after the case was filed, but before it was decided, the growth of prison populations would slow down.  Then, when the decision is final, the prison population "shrink[s] by about 15 percent relative to the rest of the country over the next three years."  Levitt saw this happen in California before Plata/Coleman's ruling, and anticipates, based on his previous study, that "ultimately violent crime will be roughly 6 percent higher in California than it would have been absent the lawsuit. That is roughly 150 extra homicides a year, 500 additional rapes, and 4,500 more robberies."  Levitt, a true economist, does not see this as a complete loss from the societal cost-benefit perspective.  "The money we save from freeing the prisoners is on the same order of magnitude as the pain and suffering associated with the extra crime."

Civilian Courts Cannot Interfere With How Detainees Treated:  At Blog of The Legal Times, Jordan Weissmann reports on federal Judge Gladys Kessler's holding that civilian courts cannot intervene in in the force-feeding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.  Senior Judge Kessler, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, wrote that not only would she decline to second guess the the judgment of Gitmo's officers because the force feedings did not demonstrate a "deliberate indifference" to the detainee's needs, but, she also wrote that although Boumediene v. Bush gave detainees habeas corpus rights, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 still prohibited civilian courts from ruling on the living conditions of the detainees.  She found Boumediene to be a narrow ruling where the Supreme Court had "refused to address" habeas corpus "with respect to confinement."