by Kent Scheidegger · May 24, 2021 8:06 am
The U.S. Supreme Court decided this morning that a statute regarding illegal reentry to the United States after being deported means what it says. Justice Sotomayor wrote the unanimous opinion of the Court in United States v. Palomar-Santiago, No. 20-437. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · May 23, 2021 8:49 pm
C&C’s archive blog, crimeandconsequences.com, is unavailable at present due to system maintenance.
by Kent Scheidegger · May 19, 2021 2:43 pm
Another result of the Oregonian poll, noted in my previous post, is reported here. It describes further consequences of police pull-back:
Residents across the metro area say downtown Portland has become dirty, unsafe and uninviting and many anticipate visiting the city’s core less often after the pandemic than they did before.
Those are the worrisome findings of a new poll of 600 people in the Portland metro area commissioned by The Oregonian/OregonLive. Asked for their perceptions of downtown, respondents frequently used words like “destroyed,” “trashed,” “riots” and “sad.” Many cited homelessness as a particular issue, and said there is an urgent need for the city to find housing and support people living on the street.
by Kent Scheidegger · May 19, 2021 2:10 pm
Now for a balancing bit of good news. Shane Kavanaugh has this article with the above title in the Oregonion.
Nearly a year after “defund the police” became a racial justice rallying cry in Portland and across the U.S., a vast majority of Portlanders and those living in the metro area reject the call to diminish police presence in the city. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · May 19, 2021 12:53 pm
In a few spots, there are some encouraging signs that Americans are starting to come out of the mass hallucination that going soft on crime is somehow going to help social problems. Philadelphia, regrettably, is not there yet. In yesterday’s primary, Democratic voters renominated pro-criminal District Attorney Larry Krasner by a 2-to-1 margin over pro-law-enforcement challenger Carlos Vega. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · May 17, 2021 11:56 am
I will be doing a teleforum for the Federalist Society on the Edwards decision today at 4:00 ET / 1:00 PT Friday at 1:30 pm ET / 10:30 am PT. The announcement is here.
Technical difficulties at the teleforum host required last-minute rescheduling.
by Kent Scheidegger · May 17, 2021 8:13 am
The U.S. Supreme Court this morning decided to take up for full briefing and argument the Arizona capital habeas corpus case of Shinn v. Ramirez, No. 20-1009.
The case involves the interaction between the Court’s “equitable exception” to the procedural default rule in Martinez v. Ryan and one of the lesser-known habeas reforms of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(2). Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · May 17, 2021 7:58 am
The U.S. Supreme Court today decided Caniglia v. Strom, No. 20-157:
Decades ago, this Court held that a warrantless search of an impounded vehicle for an unsecured firearm did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U. S. 433 (1973). In reaching this conclusion, the Court observed that police officers who patrol the “public highways” are often called to discharge noncriminal “community care-taking functions,” such as responding to disabled vehicles or investigating accidents. Id., at 441. The question today is whether Cady’s acknowledgment of these “caretaking” duties creates a standalone doctrine that justifies warrantless searches and seizures in the home. It does not. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · May 17, 2021 7:49 am
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Edwards v. Vannoy, No. 19-5807, that the rule it established last year that the Constitution requires that criminal case juries must be unanimous is not retroactive to overturn cases that were already final on appeal when Ramos v. Louisiana was decided.
The holding is correct beyond question if one correctly applies the Court’s precedents under Teague v. Lane. For the full details, see the series of posts I wrote after the oral argument:
An Easy Retroactivity Case Made Difficult — Part III, Teague‘s Phantom Exception
Today, the ghostbusters have finally purged the phantom. The Court has finally taken the step that I have urged many times since Teague and admitted that the “second exception” for “watershed rules” is not merely comatose, it is dead. It has been dead for a long time, but the false promise required attorneys to brief it and courts to decide it in every habeas retroactivity case. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · May 15, 2021 7:21 pm
Crime and Consequences Blog will be in maintenance for the rest of the weekend.
Comments posted during this time could be lost in transition. I suggest saving any posted comment in a plain text file on your own computer (such as Notepad on a Windows computer) so that it can easily be replaced if lost.
Update (5/17): Maintenance has been completed and the site appears to be fully operational. Please email ccadmin at the blog’s domain if you have any difficulties.
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