The U.S. Supreme Court released a short orders list from its conference today, presumably so the newly taken up cases can be briefed as soon as possible to get them on the oral argument calendar. There are two criminal cases.

Supervised released in the federal criminal system gets more scrutiny in Mont v. United States, No. 17-8995. I will quote the Solicitor General's version of the Question Presented because the petitioner's borders on incomprehensible:

"Whether a period of supervised release for one offense is tolled under 18 U.S.C. 3624(e) during a period of pretrial confinement that upon conviction is credited toward a defendant's term of imprisonment for another offense."

Flowers v. Mississippi, No. 17-9572 is back again after a "grant, vacate, and remand" order two years ago. The order directed the Mississippi Supreme Court to look at Flowers's claim of racial discrimination in jury selection again after considering a then-new SCOTUS precedent. The petitioner's Questions Presented page is another case study in how not to do it and will doubtless be skewered by Bill Bilderback at next year's capital litigation conference. The Court wrote its own QP, limiting review to: "Whether the Mississippi Supreme Court erred in how it applied Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 79 (1986), in this case."

Expect Monday's orders list to be all certiorari denials, no grants.