Monthly Archive: July 2026

Here are the U.S. Supreme Court opinions in criminal and related cases from the October 2025 term, i.e., October 2025 to July 2026. The case descriptions are from the court’s website.

Pitts v. Mississippi, No. 24-1159, decided November 24, 2025. Opinion Per Curiam
A defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to meet his accusers face to face may not be denied without case-specific findings of necessity, notwithstanding Mississippi’s right-to-screening statute, Miss. Code Ann. §99–43–101(2)(g).

Clark v. Sweeney, No. 25-52, decided November 24, 2025. Opinion Per Curiam
The Fourth Circuit departed from the principle of party presentation and abused its discretion in granting a new trial.

Bowe v. United States, No. 24-5438, decided January 9, 2026. Opinion by Justice Sotomayor
Title 28 U. S. C. §2244(b)(3)(E) does not bar this Court’s review of a federal prisoner’s request to file a second or successive §2255 motion for postconviction relief, and §2244(b)(1) does not apply to second or successive motions filed under §2255(h) by federal prisoners challenging their convictions or sentences.

Case v. Montana, No. 24-624, decided January 14, 2026. Opinion by Justice Kagan
Under the standard set in Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U. S. 398, 400, the Fourth Amendment allows police officers to enter a home without a warrant if they have an “objectively reasonable basis for believing” that someone inside needs emergency assistance; that standard was met here.

Barrett v. United States, No. 24-5774, decided January 14, 2026. Opinion by Justice Jackson
Congress did not clearly authorize convictions under both 18 U. S. C. §§924(c)(1)(A)(i) and (j) for a single act that violates both provisions—therefore, one act that violates both may spawn only one conviction; the part of the Second Circuit’s judgment that held otherwise is reversed.

Ellingburg v. United States, No. 24-482, decided January 20, 2026. Opinion by Justice Kavanaugh
Restitution under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996 is criminal punishment for purposes of the Ex Post Facto Clause.

Klein v. Martin, No. 25-51, decided January 26, 2026. Opinion Per Curiam
Because the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the award of a new trial based on reasoning that departed from the strict standards that govern the grant of federal habeas relief to prisoners convicted in state court prescribed by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the Court grants the State’s petition for a writ of certiorari and reverses the judgment below.

Villarreal v. Texas, No. 24-557, decided February 25, 2026. Opinion by Justice Jackson
A trial court’s qualified conferral order that prohibits only discussion of the defendant’s testimony for its own sake during a midtestimony overnight recess permissibly balances the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel against the burden of offering unaltered trial testimony and does not violate the Constitution.

Zorn v. Linton, No. 25-297, decided March 23, 2026. Opinion Per Curiam
Because the Second Circuit failed to identify a case where an officer using a routine wristlock on a protester after issuing a verbal warning, without more, was held to have violated the Constitution, Sergeant Jacob Zorn was entitled to qualified immunity; the Second Circuit’s contrary conclusion was erroneous.

Rico v. United States, No. 24-1056, decided March 25, 2026. Opinion by Justice Gorsuch
The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 does not authorize a rule automatically extending a defendant’s term of supervised release when the defendant fails to report to a probation officer.

District of Columbia v. R.W., No. 25-248, decided April 20, 2026. Opinion Per Curiam
Because Officer Vanterpool clearly had reasonable suspicion to stop R. W., the judgment of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded.

Hamm v. Smith, No. 24-872, decided May 21, 2026. Opinion Per Curiam
Certiorari dismissed as improvidently granted.

Pitchford v. Cain, No. 24-7351, decided May 28, 2026. Opinion by Justice Kavanaugh
In Pitchford’s direct appeal of a capital murder sentence, the Mississippi Supreme Court unreasonably applied the clearly established precedents of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 79, to determine that Pitchford waived his opportunity to rebut the prosecutor’s asserted race-neutral reasons for the peremptory strikes of four black prospective jurors.

Fernandez v. United States, No. 24-556, decided May 28, 2026. Opinion by Justice Barrett
A prisoner who collaterally attacks the validity of his conviction must proceed through 28 U. S. C. §2255, not 18 U. S. C. §3582; the supposed invalidity of a conviction is not among the “extraordinary and compelling reasons” that justify compassionate release.

Rutherford v. United States, No. 24-820, decided May 28, 2026. Opinion by Justice Barrett
When Congress declines to make a sentencing amendment retroactive—as with the change to 18 U. S. C. §924(c)—the resulting sentencing disparity cannot serve as an “extraordinary and compelling” reason that warrants a sentence reduction under §3582(c)(1)(A)(i).

Whitton v. Dixon, No. 25-580, decided June 1, 2026. Opinion Per Curiam
The Court of Appeals erred in considering post-trial DNA evidence when assessing whether the Florida Supreme Court reasonably determined that jailhouse informant Ozio’s testimony was immaterial to the jury’s verdict, because evidence not presented to the jury could not have influenced the jury’s verdict and therefore sheds no light on whether Ozio’s testimony influenced that verdict.

Abouammo v. United States, No. 25-5146, decided June 11, 2026. Opinion by Justice Kagan
A defendant charged with knowingly falsifying a document with the intent to obstruct a federal investigation in violation of 18 U. S. C. §1519 must be tried in the district where the falsification occurred; the defendant cannot be tried in a different district where the investigation was located because no “conduct constituting the offense” happened there.

Hunter v. United States, No. 24-1063, decided June 18, 2026. Opinion by Justice Kagan
An agreement not to appeal a sentence is unenforceable when it would result in a miscarriage of justice—meaning, when it would leave in place the kind of egregious error that would bring the judicial system into disrepute.

United States v. Hemani, No. 24-1234, decided June 18, 2026. Opinion by Justice Gorsuch
Prosecution of Ali Hemani under 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(3)—for knowingly possessing a gun in his home while being an unlawful user of a controlled substance—is inconsistent with the Second Amendment.

McCarthy v. Hernandez, No. 25-748, decided June 22, 2026. Opinion Per Curiam
The Second Circuit exceeded its authority in holding that Hernandez is entitled to habeas relief under 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1); no clearly established federal law required the trial court to instruct the jury about the rule that Justice Kennedy adopted in Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U. S. 600, and the Second Circuit erred in holding otherwise.

Landor v. Louisiana Dept of Corrections and Public Safety, No. 23-1197, decided June 23, 2026. Opinion by Justice Gorsuch
State employees may not be held liable in their personal capacities under a Spending Clause statute such as the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 unless those individuals have voluntarily and knowingly consented to answer private suits under the statute; the individual defendants in this case did not do so here, so Landor’s case cannot proceed against them.

Chatrie v. United States, No. 25-112, decided June 29, 2026. Opinion by Justice Kagan
Police officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they acquired Okello Chatrie’s location data from Google because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information.