Family, Crime, and Justice
Among the true “root causes” of crime is the decline of the family. Colbert King has this column in the WaPo on the eve of the MLK holiday weekend. Continue reading . . .
Monthly Archive: January 2024
Grants Pass Granted
The U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to take up the case of Grants Pass v. Johnson, on camping ordinances. See this post.
Paul Larkin has an article on Camping and the Constitution forthcoming in the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy. It is posted on SSRN. Continue reading . . .
Labs, Experts, and the Confrontation Clause
The U.S. Supreme Court today heard oral argument in the case of Smith v. Arizona, No. 22-899. Docket is here. Audio and transcript are here.
It has been 20 years since the high court overhauled its approach to the Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses in Crawford v. Washington, and this is the fourth time it has addressed the application of that approach to expert testimony about lab results without the technician who did the tests being present and available for cross-examination.
Under Federal Rule of Evidence 703 and equivalent rules adopted in most states, an expert can give an opinion based on facts that would not otherwise be admissible in evidence if they are facts that would normally be relied on by experts in that field. How that squares with the Sixth Amendment has not yet been made clear. Continue reading . . .
SCOTUS Monday
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a Monday orders list this morning, taking no new cases and not mentioning the two cases that CJLF filed in. See this post. There are also no opinions dissenting from denial of certiorari. Continue reading . . .
Supreme Court Conference
The U.S. Supreme Court held its first conference of 2024 today. The Court issued three orders after the conference, two of which took up new cases for briefing and argument. One order granted a stay in an abortion case from Idaho and took the case up. Another order took up and fast-tracked the Trump disqualification controversy.
Sometimes the Court issues a short order list of cases granted on the day of the conference and a long list of cases denied on the following Monday. Other times it issues a single list with both on Monday.
Given the unusual nature of both cases taken up today and the need for rapid action, this does not look like the typical short Friday order list situation. I expect that Monday’s list with have both grants and denials.
There were two cases scheduled for today’s conference where CJLF wrote or assisted with a brief: Grants Pass v. Johnson, involving the Ninth Circuit’s theory that the Eighth Amendment severely limits cities’ ability to ban camping on public property, and Glossip v. Oklahoma, involving repeated attacks on a murder conviction. Continue reading . . .
Federal Tax Dollars Fund Woke Criminal Justice Reform
Roughly $1.27 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars is being spent to support alternatives to law enforcement in Wichita, Kansas. The Act was passed out of Congress and signed by President Biden in 2021 on the fiction that the $1.9 trillion slush fund would be spent to help the country recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. Chance Swaim of The Wichita Eagle reports that the Wichita interrupter program will be run by the non-profit Community Restorative Innovation and will send counselors and “violence interrupters” into high crime neighborhoods to implement the Cure Violence model, which treats violent crime as a public health problem which can be reduced through education, counseling and encouragement. The same model has been utilized in Chicago for 24 years. How has that been working out?
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED