As usual, the U.S. Supreme Court opened its term with a long list of cases it declined to take up at its conference a week earlier. Here are some that we were watching:

Davis v. Mississippi, No. 17-1343. The defense sought to further extend the restrictions on sentencing of under-18 murderers that the Supreme Court has  discovered in the Eighth Amendment in recent years. With the champion of that effort retired, it is not surprising that they turned this one down. Hopefully when the empty seat is filled we can make some progress on rolling these pseudoconstitutional restrictions back.

Garvin v. New York, No. 17-1320 had two questions. One was a Fourth Amendment warrant-requirement question regarding arrest of a person in the doorway of a home by an officer standing outside. The second was an attempt to extend the Apprendi requirement of jury fact-finding to a discretionary sentencing issue based on wide-open information on the defendant's background.

Johnson v. United States, No. 17-1349 challenged as pretextual a stop of a motorist for a parking violation and questioned whether Whren v. United States (1996) extends that far.

Kelley v. Florida, No. 17-1603 challenged the decision of the Supreme Court of Florida not to extend retroactivity of Hurst v. Florida (2016) to cases final on appeal before Ring v. Arizona (2002). I think it is quite clear that federal law does not require retroactively to cases final on appeal before Hurst itself. But because Florida did extend retroactivity 14 years longer than it needed to, it must extend it to everybody? The "unequal treatment" argument was Justice White's objection to Griffith and Teague drawing the line at finality on appeal back in the 80s, but he did not prevail and came to accept the new regime in Penry. This is water long under the bridge.