The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/courts/supreme-court/)
The Supreme Court blocked the House from viewing former special counsel Robert Mueller’s grand jury documents Thursday. The ruling means that the documents will be released after Trump faces voters in November.
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration cannot carry out its plan to shut down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which has allowed nearly 800,000 young people, known as “Dreamers,” to avoid deportation and remain in the U.S. The White House could try again to end the DACA program by providing a better explanation.
Court rulings that protect officers from liability over excessive use of force have drawn much criticism, but only Justice Clarence Thomas voted to hear a case challenging the principle of “qualified immunity.”
What are the boundaries of policing—and how do we hold police accountable if they go beyond those boundaries? asks a former Pennsylvania DA.
Police have temporarily detained journalists at protests or blocked citizen reporters from videotaping an arrest on the grounds they refused to obey lawful orders. Despite a 2019 Supreme Court ruling upholding the practice, lower courts can still find remedies to protect First Amendment rights, says a forthcoming paper.
“If U.S. Attorneys could prosecute as property fraud every lie a state or local official tells in making such a decision, the result would be … ’a sweeping expansion of federal criminal jurisdiction,’” wrote Justice Elena Kagan for a unanimous court.
The recent 6-3 decision ruling out non-unanimous jury verdicts was long overdue, but it also threw into sharper relief the present Court’s failure to grapple with the deep inequities of the justice system, argues a leading conservative opponent of the death penalty.
The Supreme Court recently held that jury verdicts in state criminal cases must be unanimous. The remarkable fact, argues TCR’s legal columnist, is not that unanimous juries are required; it is that virtually nothing is decided by jurors, unanimously or otherwise—and no one seems to care.
The court’s majority dismissed a challenge to a former New York City law banning the transport of guns outside city limits after the city changed the law. Three justices protested that the court was being “manipulated,” and Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the court should take up another gun-rights case “soon.”
In a Georgia case, the Supreme Court will decide whether it is a federal crime for someone with permission to access information on a computer to access that information for an improper purpose.