Appeals

As of July 1, 2024, 200 people in the U.S. have been exonerated and freed from death row since 1973 (access full article).

In 2021, the Death Penalty Information Center dubbed this national reality an “innocence epidemic” when the number of death row exonerations had reached 185 people. Two recent exonerations have brought the number to 200: the June 19, 2024 exoneration of Kerry Cook in Texas and the July 1, 2024 exoneration of Larry Roberts in California.

Pennsylvania man is convicted of murder and appeals through the state court system. He ultimately loses at the Pennsylvania Supreme Court but receives no notice of the ruling. Uh oh! When the trial court dockets the Supreme Court's ruling, it gets the date wrong, recording it as March 16, 2015, rather than February 19, 2015. The error is not detected until the man files a federal habeas petition, which is dismissed for being 14 days too late (it would have been timely under the date recorded by the trial court). Is he out of luck? District court: Yup!

Alaska U.S. District Court Judge Joshua Kindred announced his abrupt resignation (access full article).

He cited no reason in his two-line resignation letter, dated July 3, 2024. The court posted it on its website Friday, and it takes effect Monday.

Joshua Kindred, who abruptly resigned as a U.S. District Court judge for Alaska last week, had an “inappropriately sexualized relationship” with one of his law clerks, engaged in “unwanted” sexual conduct and then lied about it to the chief judge, according to the Judicial Council of the Ninth Circuit (access full article).

A deputy U.S. Marshal protecting Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor shot a teenager attempting to carjack the officer’s vehicle last week, according to court records and other reports (access full article).

A California federal judge who ordered a teenager handcuffed at her father’s sentencing hearing was properly reprimanded, a judiciary conduct committee said Tuesday.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals announced Wednesday that U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez “engaged in abusive or harassing behavior” constituting a rare finding of judicial misconduct when he ordered a U.S.

Late one night a Pittsburgh man—a felon on probation—and his girlfriend see shadowy figures breaking into her car behind their house. Girlfriend gets out her handgun she keeps in a safe, hands it to the man, and takes her three kids out of the house and to safety. Man then confronts the figures, who flee, but while fleeing he fires shots and hits one in the thigh. Man dutifully calls his probation officer and admits to this—for which he's charged with being a felon "in possession" and sentenced to 84 months imprisonment. Second Amendment violation?

Man and woman conspire to kill woman's former husband, which they accomplish. Both are sentenced to death. Yikes! Turns out the judge (ex parte) tasked the prosecutor with drafting the sentencing opinion with the aid of the judge's notes. (The judge and prosecutor are publicly reprimanded.) The condemned man gets re-sentenced to death by the same judge who refused to consider new mitigating evidence and in an opinion that is almost identical to the original. Sixth Circuit: Habeas granted.

In 1971, man pleads guilty to killing his wife. After a few years behind bars he gets out, gets a girlfriend, and then kills her. He agrees to trust his fate to a 3-judge panel (whose identities he knows ahead of time) instead of a jury. Which gives him the death penalty. And after some appeals gives him another one. Later he wins at the Sixth Circuit in 2007 to receive another resentencing. Only problem is it's been so long that all 3 judges are dead or retired. So they use a new 3-judge panel. Which gives him the death penalty.