by Kent Scheidegger · Jul 2, 2025 11:08 am
Here are brief summaries of the holdings in the criminal and related cases for the U.S. Supreme Court term just ended, October 2024 to June 2025. The summaries are taken from the Supreme Court’s website. Continue reading . . .
by Michael Rushford · Jul 1, 2025 11:41 am
Bryan Kohberger, the criminology student charged with the brutal murders of four University of Idaho co-eds in 2022, has agreed to plead guilty in exchange for four consecutive life-in-prison-without-parole (LWOP) sentences. CBS News reports that in a letter delivered prior to Kohberger’s upcoming trial his attorneys asked for the plea deal, which includes a waiver of his right to appeal. Overwhelming evidence pointed to Kohberger as the person who, early on the morning of November 13, 2022, entered an unlocked home in Moscow, Idaho and stabbed college friends Ethan Chapin, 20, Xana Kernodle, 20, Madison Mogen, 21, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21 to death while they slept.
by Kent Scheidegger · Jun 27, 2025 5:14 pm
Junko Ogura and Chris Lau report for CNN:
Japan has executed a man dubbed the “Twitter killer,” who was convicted of murdering and dismembering nine people, mostly women, in the country’s first use of capital punishment in nearly three years.
Takahiro Shiraishi, 34, was hanged Friday at the Tokyo Detention House. He was sentenced to death in 2020 after pleading guilty to killing the nine people – eight women and one man. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Jun 27, 2025 8:09 am
The Supreme Court held today that the statute that grants federal courts authority in “suits in equity” does not empower a court to issue an injunction against enforcement of a statute or executive order that applies nationwide, as opposed to one that only protects the plaintiffs in the case.
The high court based its opinion on the statute only, not Article III of the Constitution as the government had requested. That means that Congress can still enact a new statute spelling out when, if ever, nationwide injunctions can be ordered. Bills are pending in Congress, as I noted in this post. Congress should proceed with that effort. Sometimes such injunctions are needed, but swift review must be provided so that a single judge does not halt enforcement on a dubious theory, especially where the same theory has been rejected by other district judges.
by Michael Rushford · Jun 26, 2025 11:09 am
Despite President Trump’s pledge to have Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) catch and deport the worst illegal alien criminals, NBC news reports that so far the administration has only caught and arrested 752 illegal alien murderers. According to the story, new data obtained by NBC News shows that from Oct. 1 to May 31, ICE arrested 752 people convicted of homicide and 1,693 people convicted of sexual assault, meaning that at the absolute most, the Trump administration has detained only 6% of the undocumented immigrants known to ICE to have been convicted of homicide and 11% of those known to ICE to have been convicted of sexual assault. The obvious conclusion is that the Trump administration is failing to keep its promise. The article goes on to suggest, that based upon an anonymous source, ICE is now arresting and deporting “anyone who does not have legal status.”
by Kent Scheidegger · Jun 26, 2025 8:25 am
The U.S. Supreme Court today decided, 5-1-3, that a Texas death row inmate has standing to challenge that state’s procedures for seeking DNA testing.
Justice Alito, dissenting, was critical of Justice Sotomayor’s majority opinion, to put it mildly: Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Jun 21, 2025 8:08 pm
Ana Kasparian has this post with the above title at Real Clear Investigations.
by Kent Scheidegger · Jun 20, 2025 9:10 am
There is no parole, as such, in the federal sentencing system, but a sentence can include a period of “supervised release” following the term of incarceration. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(A), when imposing the original sentence, a federal judge can consider, among other factors, “the need for the sentence imposed” “to reflect the seriousness of the offense, to promote respect for the law, and to provide just punishment for the offense.” Can the judge consider that factor when deciding on a revocation of supervised release?
No, the Supreme Court decided today in Esteras v. United States, No. 23-7483. Why not? The simple answer is because Congress said so. The statute on supervised release, 18 U.S.C. § 3583(c), specifies the factors. Many of the factors used to set the initial sentence are included, but that one is conspicuously absent.
So why is there any difficulty at all? Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Jun 20, 2025 7:31 am
In previous posts, I discussed California Governor Gavin Newsom’s suit against President Trump’s federalization of the National Guard to deal with the Los Angeles riots, the district court’s temporary restraining order, and the court of appeals’s immediate short-term administrative stay.
Yesterday, despite being a federal holiday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stayed the district court’s TRO for the duration of the appeal. In circumstances such as this, the stay pending appeal may be the whole ball game. If order is restored and the federalization rescinded before the actual decision of the appeal, the appeal may very well be dismissed as moot.
The panel was not too worried about the point that I considered the weakest element of the President’s case, the requirement of 10 U.S.C. § 12406 that the orders be issued through the state governor.
by Kent Scheidegger · Jun 18, 2025 8:41 am
The U.S. Supreme Court handed down five opinions in civil cases this morning. One of them is a law-enforcement-related civil case, a category we keep tabs on at CJLF.
In 1995, Congress enacted the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) to cut down on the amount of federal court litigation involving prisoners. One requirement of the law, a common one in cases involving government agencies, is that a prisoner must first try any administrative remedies available in the prison system before turning to the courts. The Supreme Court has previously decided that a remedy is not “available” for this purpose if it is unavailable in practice, even if it exists on the books.
So, if a prison guard accused of misconduct blocks the prisoner from the grievance process by destroying his papers, the process would be unavailable, and the prisoner can proceed to federal court. But if that blocking is disputed, who decides if it really happened, the federal judge or a jury? That was the question in Perttu v. Richards, decided today. Continue reading . . .
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