Texas Stay: AP reports that Justice Scalia granted a stay of execution to Ronald Chambers while the Court considers his petition on arguments similar to the Texas cases heard on Jan. 17. Chambers abducted and killed Mike McMahan during a carjacking in 1975. UPDATE: The Dallas Morning News has this article by Diane Jennings describing the crime and the long delays, with comments by Deia Sutton Roberts, who survived the crime, and Mike McMahan's sister. Updatex2: The case is Chambers v. Quarterman, No. 06-7263.

Prison Litigation: In Jones v. Bock, the Court resolved several procedural issues in prisoner litigation under the Prison Litigation Reform Act: (1) Exhaustion of administrative remedies is an affirmative defense the defendant must raise; the plaintiff need not plead it. (2) The administrative proceedings need not name all the same defendants as the subsequent civil action. (3) A complaint with some exhausted and some unexhausted claims need not be dismissed in its entirety. Typically, by the time a case gets to federal court, it is too late to exhaust any more claims, and the ones that weren't exhausted can just be dismissed. (4) Chief Justice Roberts further confirms that he is willing to assign boring cases to himself.

Mirzayance: Conspicuously absent from the orders list is Knowles v. Mirzayance, which was on its sixth conference list Friday, as previously noted. Suggestion for Cal AG: print the cover of your cert. petition on milk cartons with the caption "Have You Seen This Case?"

McDonald: The case of McDonald v. United States, also noted last week, was denied.