Appeals

North Carolina single mother of two leaving the courtroom after attending her boyfriend's plea hearing exclaims "piece of shit!" as she leaves the courtroom. The magistrate judge calls her to the bench, immediately holds a two-minute hearing, declares her guilty of criminal contempt, and sentences her to ten days in jail, to begin immediately. She's ultimately confined for 13 days due to "an error." District court: That's fine. Fourth Circuit: Definitely not fine.

Kansas woman pleads guilty without plea agreement to her charge. District court, in deciding what sentence to impose, states when there is no plea agreement, the sentence will be somewhere in the middle of the Guidelines range. Woman: objection! That is not a valid basis. District court: Objection overruled. Here's a sentence above the low-end of the Guidelines range based on my practice. Circuit Court: Not good.

In state court news, the Supreme Court of Maryland rifles through the evidence and shoots down firearm experts' striking claims that they can link a certain bullet to a particular gun. Henceforth, such claims will trigger significant scrutiny, and, if an expert that tries to claim more than what the evidence supports, courts should rightfully go ballistic. New trial ordered.

This morning, a 7-2 divided Supreme Court decided Counterman v. Colorado, No. 22-138 (June 27, 2023), holding that the government must prove in true-threats cases that the defendant had some subjective understanding of his statements’ threatening nature, but the First Amendment requires no more demanding a showing than recklessness.  Justice Kagan delivered the opinion of the Court, joined by Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Alito, Kavanaugh, Jackson.

SCOTUS Rejects First Amendment Challenge to Inducing Illegal Immigration

This morning, a 6 to 3 divided Supreme Court issued a significant decision in Jones v. Hendrix, No. 21-857 (June 22, 2023), limiting the availability of habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 for federal prisoners.  Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.  Justices Sotomayor and Kagan filed a short dissenting opinion, and Justice Jackson filed a lengthy dissenting opinion.

Timothy Smith is an avid fisherman and software engineer who lives in Mobile, Alabama near the Gulf Coast.  He discovered that a private company named Strikezones, headquartered in the Northern District of Florida, was selling geographic coordinates of artificial reefs that individuals create to attract fish.  Irritated that Strikezones was profiting from the work of private reef builders, Smith used some software to secretly obtain tranches of coordinates from Strikezone’s website and made them available to requesters on social media.

Evidence of child pornography found on a defendant’s phone must be suppressed and his plea vacated because the application for the search warrant didn’t adequately establish probable cause, the First Circuit said (view full

In a case that could have easily sprung from the wild imagination of law school hypotheticals, the Fifth Circuit holds that hitching a ride across the border in a car with 283 pounds of marijuana, is not, strictly speaking, possessing marijuana. The two men could really have been hitchhikers. Mere presence in the area where the drugs are found is not a crime. Convictions vacated. Dissent: Shut the front door. Two hundred. Eighty-three. Pounds.

A dozen Philadelphia police officers take to Facebook and post offensive comments about protestors, refugees, police brutality, the LGBTQ community, transgender people, Muslims, families with incarcerated fathers, and more. Following media coverage, several officers are disciplined. A First Amendment violation? District court: Nope. Case dismissed. Third Circuit: Well, maybe, at least at the pleadings stage. The Pickering balancing test (the standard governing when public employees constitutionally can be disciplined for their speech) is pretty fact-intensive.