CrimProf Blog

Argument transcripts from Monday and Tuesday

Renico v. Lett is here.

Dillon v. United States is here.

Barber v. Thomas is here.

Summaries of the issues are here.

Opinion on duty to advise on immigration consequences of guilty plea

The opinion in Padilla v. Kentucky is here. Here is the syllabus:

Petitioner Padilla, a lawful permanent resident of the United States for over 40 years, faces deportation after pleading guilty to drug-distribution charges in Kentucky. In postconviction proceedings, he claims that his counsel not only failed to advise him of this consequence before he entered the plea, but also told him not to worry about deportation since he had lived in this country so long. He alleges that he would have gone to trial had he not received this incorrect advice. The Kentucky Supreme Court denied Padilla postconviction relief on the ground that the Sixth Amendment’s effective-assistance-of-counsel guarantee does not protect defendants from erroneous deportation advice because deportation is merely a “collateral” consequence of a conviction.

Held: Because counsel must inform a client whether his plea carries a risk of deportation, Padilla has sufficiently alleged that his counsel was constitutionally deficient. Whether he is entitled to relief depends on whether he has been prejudiced, a matter not addressed here. Pp. 2–18.

(a) Changes to immigration law have dramatically raised the stakes of a noncitizen’s criminal conviction. While once there was only a narrow class of deportable offenses and judges wielded broad discretionary authority to prevent deportation, immigration reforms have expanded the class of deportable offenses and limited judges’ authority to alleviate deportation’s harsh consequences. Because the drastic measure of deportation or removal is now virtually inevitable for a vast number of noncitizens convicted of crimes, the importance of accurate legal advice for noncitizens accused of crimes has never been more important. Thus, as a matter of federal law, deportation is an integral part of the penalty that may be imposed on noncitizen defendants who plead guilty to specified crimes. Pp. 2–6.

(b) Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668, applies to Padilla’s claim. Before deciding whether to plead guilty, a defendant is entitled to “the effective assistance of competent counsel.” McMann v. Richardson, 397 U. S. 759, 771. The Supreme Court of Kentucky rejected Padilla’s ineffectiveness claim on the ground that the advice he sought about deportation concerned only collateral matters. However, this Court has never distinguished between direct and collateral consequences in defining the scope of constitutionally “reason-able professional assistance” required under Strickland, 466 U. S., at 689. The question whether that distinction is appropriate need not be considered in this case because of the unique nature of deportation. Although removal proceedings are civil, deportation is intimately related to the criminal process, which makes it uniquely difficult to classify as either a direct or a collateral consequence. Because that distinction is thus ill-suited to evaluating a Strickland claim concerning the specific risk of deportation, advice regarding deportation is not categorically removed from the ambit of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Pp. 7–9.

(c) To satisfy Strickland’s two-prong inquiry, counsel’s representation must fall “below an objective standard of reasonableness,” 466 U.S., at 688, and there must be “a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different,” id., at 694. The first, constitutional deficiency, is necessarily linked to the legal community’s practice and expectations. Id., at 688. The weight of prevailing professional norms supports the view that counsel must advise her client regarding the deportation risk. And this Court has recognized the importance to the client of “ ‘[p]reserving the . . . right to remain in the United States’ ”and “preserving the possibility of” discretionary relief from deportation. INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U. S. 289, 323. Thus, this is not a hard case in which to find deficiency: The consequences of Padilla’s plea could easily be determined from reading the removal statute, his deportation was presumptively mandatory, and his counsel’s advice was incorrect. There will, however, undoubtedly be numerous situations in which the deportation consequences of a plea are unclear. In those cases, a criminal defense attorney need do no more than advise a noncitizen client that pending criminal charges may carry adverse immigration consequences. But when the deportation consequence is truly clear, as it was here, the duty to give correct advice is equally clear. Accepting Padilla’s allegations as true, he has sufficiently alleged constitutional deficiency to satisfy Strickland’s first prong.Whether he can satisfy the second prong, prejudice, is left for the Kentucky courts to consider in the first instance. Pp. 9–12.

(d) The Solicitor General’s proposed rule—that Strickland should be applied to Padilla’s claim only to the extent that he has alleged affirmative misadvice—is unpersuasive. And though this Court must be careful about recognizing new grounds for attacking the validity of guilty pleas, the 25 years since Strickland was first applied to ineffective-assistance claims at the plea stage have shown that pleas are less frequently the subject of collateral challenges than convictions after a trial. Also, informed consideration of possible deportation can benefit both the State and noncitizen defendants, who may be able to reach agreements that better satisfy the interests of both parties.This decision will not open the floodgates to challenges of convictions obtained through plea bargains. Cf. Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U. S. 52, 58. Pp. 12–16.

253 S. W. 3d 482, reversed and remanded.

STEVENS, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which KENNEDY, GINSBURG, BREYER, and SOTOMAYOR, JJ., joined. ALITO, J., filed an opin-ion concurring in the judgment, in which ROBERTS, C. J., joined. SCALIA, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which THOMAS, J., joined.

Kerr on Warrants in National Security Investigations

Orin S. Kerr  (George Washington University - Law School) has posted The Modest Role of the Warrant Clause in National Security Investigations (Texas Law Review, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Why is the Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment so modest in national security investigations? This symposium essay argues that the Warrant Clause has a narrow role because the extension of the Warrant Clause into national security law forces courts to pose a question that judges cannot readily answer. The cases extending the Warrant Clause to the national security setting held that warrants are required only when a warrant requirement would be reasonable, and the warrants that are required are whatever warrants would be reasonable. This double-barreled reasonableness test gave the Supreme Court the flexibility to insert the Warrant Cause almost anywhere, including the setting of national security investigations. But it came at a cost. The test created to give the Court flexibility forces judges to ask a question they are particularly poorly-equipped to answer. Faced with uncertainty, most judges will remain cautious. As a result, the Warrant Clause will apply broadly in theory but work modestly in practice. 

This essay was presented at a Texas Law Review symposium on "National Security, Privacy, and Technological Change" on February 5, 2010.

Today's opinion in fair-cross-section case

The opinion in Berghuis v. Smith is here. Here is the syllabus:

Criminal defendants have a Sixth Amendment right to trial by an impartial jury drawn from a fair cross section of the community. See Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U. S. 522. To establish a prima facie violation of the fair-cross-section requirement, a defendant must prove that: (1) a group qualifying as “distinctive” (2) is not fairly and reasonably represented in jury venires, and (3) “systematic exclusion” in the jury-selection process accounts for the underrepresentation. Duren v. Missouri, 439 U. S. 357, 364.

At voir dire in the Kent County Circuit Court trial of respondent Smith, an African-American, the venire panel included between 60 and 100 individuals, only 3 of whom, at most, were African-American. At that time, African-Americans constituted 7.28% of the County’s jury-eligible population, and 6% of the pool from which potential jurors were drawn. The court rejected Smith’s objection to the panel’s racial composition, an all-white jury convicted him of second-degree murder and felony firearm possession, and the court sentenced him to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

On order of the Michigan Court of Appeals, the trial court conducted an evidentiary hearing on Smith’s fair-cross-section claim.The evidence at the hearing showed, inter alia, that under the juror-assignment order in effect when Smith’s jury was empaneled, the County assigned prospective jurors first to local district courts, and,only after filling local needs, made remaining persons available to the countywide Circuit Court, which heard felony cases like Smith’s.Smith calls this procedure “siphoning.” The month after Smith’s voir dire, however, the County reversed course and adopted a Circuit-Court-first assignment order. It did so based on the belief that the district courts took most of the minority jurors, leaving the Circuit Court with a jury pool that did not represent the entire County. The trial court noted two means of measuring the underrepresentation of African-Americans on Circuit Court venires. First, the court de-scribed the “absolute disparity” test, under which the percentage of African-Americans in the jury pool (6%) is subtracted from the percentage of African-Americans in the local, jury-eligible population (7.28%). According to this measure, African-Americans were under-represented by 1.28%. Next, the court set out the “comparative disparity” test, under which the absolute disparity (1.28%) is divided by the percentage of African-Americans in the jury-eligible population (7.28%). The quotient (18%) indicated that, on average, African-Americans were 18% less likely, when compared to the overall jury-eligible population, to be on the jury-service list. In the 11 months after Kent County discontinued the district-court-first assignment policy, the comparative disparity, on average, dropped from 18% to15.1%. The hearing convinced the trial court that African-Americans were underrepresented on Circuit Court venires. But Smith’s evidence, the trial court held, was insufficient to prove that the juror-assignment order, or any other part of the jury-selection process, had systematically excluded African-Americans. The court therefore rejected Smith’s fair-cross-section claim.

The state intermediate appellate court reversed and ordered a newmtrial with jurors selected under the Circuit-Court-first assignment order. Reversing in turn, the Michigan Supreme Court concluded that Smith had not established a prima facie Sixth Amendment violation. This Court, the state High Court observed, has specified no preferred method for measuring whether representation of a distinctive group in the jury pool is fair and reasonable. The court noted that lower federal courts had applied three tests: the absolute and comparative disparity tests and a standard deviation test. Adopting a case-by-case approach allowing consideration of all three means of measuring underrepresentation, the court found that Smith had failed to establish a legally significant disparity under any measurement. Nevertheless giving Smith the benefit of the doubt on under-representation, the court determined that he had not shown systematic exclusion.

Smith then filed a federal habeas petition. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) prohibits federal habeas relief unless the state court’s adjudication “resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of,clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,” 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1), or “resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding,” §2254(d)(2). Finding no infirmity in the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision when assessed under AEDPA’s standards, the District Court dismissed Smith’s petition. The Sixth Circuit reversed. The Court of Appeals ruled, first, that courts should use the comparative disparity test to measure underrepresentation where, as here, the allegedly excluded group is small. The court then held that Smith’s comparative disparity statistics demonstrated that African-Americans’ representation in County Circuit Court venires was unfair and unreasonable.It next stated that Smith had shown systematic exclusion. In accord with the Michigan intermediate appellate court, the Sixth Circuit believed that the district-court-first assignment order significantly reduced the number of African-Americans available for Circuit Court venires. Smith was entitled to relief, the Sixth Circuit concluded, because no important state interest supported the district-court-first allocation system.

Held: The Sixth Circuit erred in ruling that the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision “involv[ed] an unreasonable application o[f] clearly established Federal law,” §2254(d)(1). Duren hardly establishes—no less “clearly” so—that Smith was denied his Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury drawn from a fair cross section of the community. Pp. 10–16.

(a) The Duren defendant readily met all three parts of the Court’s prima facie test when he complained of the dearth of women in a county’s jury pool. First, he showed that women in the county were both “numerous and distinct from men.” 439 U. S., at 364. Second, to establish underrepresentation, he proved that women were 54% of the jury-eligible population, but accounted for only 26.7% of those summoned for jury service, and only 14.5% of those on the postsummons weekly venires from which jurors were drawn. Id., at 364–366. Finally, to show the “systematic” cause of the underrepresentation, he pointed to Missouri’s law permitting any woman to opt out of jury service and to the manner in which the county administered that law. This Court noted that “appropriately tailored” hardship exemptions would likely survive a fair-cross-section challenge if justified by an important state interest, id., at 370, but concluded that no such interest could justify the exemption for each and every woman, id., at 369–370. Pp. 10–11.

(b) Neither Duren nor any other decision of this Court specifies the method or test courts must use to measure underrepresentation.Each of the three methods employed or identified by the courts below—absolute disparity, comparative disparity, and standard deviation—is imperfect. Absolute disparity and comparative disparity measurements can be misleading where, as here, members of the distinctive group compose only a small percentage of the community’s jury-eligible population. And it appears that no court has relied exclusively on a standard deviation analysis. Even absent AEDPA’s constraint, this Court would have no cause to take sides here on the appropriate method or methods for measuring underrepresentation.Although the Michigan Supreme Court concluded that Smith’s statistical evidence failed to establish a legally significant disparity under either the absolute or comparative disparity tests, the court nevertheless gave Smith the benefit of the doubt on underrepresentation in order to reach the issue ultimately dispositive in Duren: To the extent underrepresentation existed, was it due to “systematic exclusion”? See Duren, 439 U. S., at 364. Pp. 11–13.

(c) Smith’s evidence gave the Michigan Supreme Court little reason to conclude that the district-court-first assignment order had any significant effect on the representation of African-Americans on Circuit Court venires. Although the record established that some County officials believed that the assignment order created racia ldisparities, and the County reversed the order in response, the belief was not substantiated by Smith’s evidence. He introduced no evidence that African-Americans were underrepresented on the Circuit Court’s venires in significantly higher percentages than on the District Court for Grand Rapids, which had the County’s largest African-American population. He did not address whether Grand Rapids had more need for jurors per capita than any other district in Kent County. And he did not compare the African-American representation levels on Circuit Court venires with those on the Federal District Court venires for the same region. See Duren, n. 25. Smith’s best evidence of systematic exclusion was the decline in comparative underrepresentation, from 18 to 15.1%, after Kent County reversed its assignment order. But that evidence indicated no large change and was, in any event, insufficient to prove that the original assignment order had a significantly adverse impact on the representation of African-Americans on Circuit Court venires. Pp.13–14.

(d) In addition to renewing his “siphoning” argument, Smith urges that a laundry list of factors—e.g., the County’s practice of excusing prospective jurors without adequate proof of alleged hardship, and the refusal of County police to enforce orders for prospective jurors to appear—combined to reduce systematically the number of African-Americans appearing on jury lists. No “clearly established” precedent of this Court supports Smith’s claim. Smith urges that one sentence in Duren, 439 U. S., at 368–369, places the burden of proving causation on the State. But Smith clipped that sentence from its context: The sentence does not concern the demonstration of a prima face case; instead, it speaks to what the State might show to rebut the defendant’s prima facie case. The Michigan Supreme Court was therefore far from “unreasonable,” §2254(d)(1), in concluding that Duren first and foremost required Smith himself to show that the underrepresentation complained of was due to systematic exclusion. This Court, furthermore, has never “clearly established” that jury-selection-process features of the kind on Smith’s list can give rise to a fair-cross-section claim. Rather, the Taylor Court “recognized broad discretion in the States” to “prescribe relevant qualifications for their jurors and to provide reasonable exemptions.” 419 U. S., at 537–538. And in Duren, the Court understood that hardship exemptions resembling those Smith assails might well “survive a fair-cross-section challenge.” 439 U. S., at 370. Pp. 14–16.

543 F. 3d 326, reversed and remanded.

GINSBURG, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. THOMAS, J., filed a concurring opinion.

Rust on Appellate Review of Federal Sentencing Decisions

Craig D. Rust has posted When ‘Reasonableness’ is Not so Reasonable: The Need to Restore Clarity to the Appellate Review of Federal Sentencing Decisions after Rita, Gall, and Kimbrough {Touro Law Review, Vol. 26, No. 75, 2010) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Judges, like anyone else who works for a living, need standards. Judges need to know what rules to apply, when to apply them, and who to apply them to. And judges, just like you or I, want to know how their work will be reviewed.

Unfortunately, in many circuits, federal district court judges do not know how, or even if, their work will be reviewed by appellate courts in the context of criminal sentencing decisions.

Booker completely changed the sentencing landscape in the federal court system, but it left many questions as to what standards appellate courts would apply in reviewing sentencing decisions. The Supreme Court issued three opinions in 2007, Rita, Gall, and Kimbrough, in an attempt to resolve several of the circuit splits that resulted when the Supreme Court repealed the mandatory sentencing guidelines in Booker. Practically speaking, these decisions failed to clarify what authority appellate courts wield in the sentencing process, and how appellate judges should exercise that authority.

This Article examines how the contradictory language from Rita, Gall, and Kimbrough not only failed to provide clarity, but created new inter- and even intra-circuit splits. This Article argues that these problems can only be resolved by articulating clear and practicable standards that prioritize the sentencing factors contained in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), rather than continuing to weigh them all equally. Specifically, the Supreme Court could require district court judges to take advantage of the wealth of sentencing data being collected by the U.S. Sentencing Commission to justify particular sentences for defendants by reference to those given to similarly situated defendants across the nation. This solution has the potential to achieve the balance that has thus far eluded the Court between both Congress’ legislative intent behind the original enactment of the mandatory sentencing guidelines, and the Court’s Sixth Amendment concerns raised in Booker.

Benforado on Geography of Criminal Law

Adam Benforado (Drexel University - Earle Mack School of Law) has posted The Geography of Criminal Law (Cardozo Law Review, Vol. 31, No. 3, 2010) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

When Westerners explain the causes of actions or outcomes in the criminal law context, they demonstrate a strong tendency to overestimate the importance of dispositional factors, like thinking, preferring, and willing, and underestimate the impact of interior and exterior situational factors, including environmental, historical, and social forces, as well as affective states, knowledge structures, motives, and other unseen aspects of our cognitive frameworks and processes. One of the situational factors that we are particularly likely to overlook is physical space - that is, landscapes, places, natures, boundaries, and spatialities. Our shortsightedness comes at a great cost. Spatial concerns shape legal structures, order interactions, and influence behavior.

To understand these dynamics, this Article establishes the foundation for a new spatial analysis of criminal law. By casting a wide net and capturing data across a diverse set of fields, this Article uncovers unappreciated but vital parallels, connections, and patterns concerning the ways in which physical space - and the meanings that we attach to spatial elements - affect (1) the proximate decision to commit a crime, (2) the likelihood a given person will become a criminal, (3) the experience of victimization, (4) the way in which policing is conducted, (5) what a crime is and how it is prosecuted, and (6) the consequences of being convicted.

As the first Article in a broader project, this systematic spatial analysis provides the basis for future work dedicated to understanding the origins of our criminal system and assessing whether our current legal structures - from the laws on the books to the practices of police officers to our approaches to punishment - align with our societal needs and values, and, thus, whether the structures we have in place ought to be changed. Instead of building its normative conclusions on geographical analysis alone, the project employs the lens of the mind sciences - including social psychology, social cognition, evolutionary psychology, and related fields - to investigate and explain identified spatial dynamics. This research offers the best hope for unlocking, among other concerns, why our justice system has focused on physically isolating criminals from society; why laws are frequently structured around protecting the physical boundaries of the body, home, and community; why more police shootings occur in certain areas than others; and why we have spatially-embedded laws that become inoperative when an individual leaves a jurisdiction.

Blumenthal on Law and the Emotions

Jeremy A. Blumenthal (Syracuse University - College of Law) has posted A Moody View of the Law: Looking Back and Looking Ahead at Law and the Emotions (Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Vol. 56, 2010) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Despite burgeoning as a field of study, and despite receiving substantial attention outside of academia – now – Justice Sotomayor’s “empathy” kerfuffle as the most prominent example – law and emotions has received little treatment as a unified field. A book-length treatment a decade ago began to organize the field, but lacked discussion of much empirical work in social science. Only in the last four years have efforts begun to taxonomize the study of law and emotions into a coherent whole, but even such efforts are primarily descriptive.

In the present paper I trace some history of the study of law and emotions, and give some account of where it is today; I then proceed to outline where the study may proceed in the future, laying out specific research agendas that legal and social science academics might profitably pursue. Specifically, I review early empirical research that viewed emotion as a corruptive influence on legal decision-making, and the assumptions that drove such research: assumptions that are largely still present today. I then review some of the current state of law and emotions, focusing on its effect in the contexts of jury decision-making, false memories, and terror management theory.

Finally, I look ahead and identify about a range of potentially fruitful research topics in law and emotion, including happiness, affective forecasting, moral decision-making, property law, paternalism, and several others.

A version of the paper was presented as invited commentary at the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation: Law and Emotion: Psychological Perspectives, Lincoln, NE (Apr. 2008), and will be published in Vol. 56 of the Symposium (2010).

Top-Ten Recent SSRN Downloads

are here. The usual disclaimers apply.

Rank	Downloads	Paper Title
1	402	The Emerging Law of Detention: The Guantanamo Cases as Lawmaking Benjamin Wittes, Robert Chesney, Rabea Benhalim, Unaffiliated Authors - affiliation not provided to SSRN, University of Texas School of Law, Brookings Institution, Date posted to database: January 27, 2010
2	269	The Greatest Legal Movie of All Time: Proclaiming the Real Winner Grant H. Morris, University of San Diego School of Law, Date posted to database: January 12, 2010
3	191	Brain Imaging for Legal Thinkers: A Guide for the Perplexed Owen D. Jones, Joshua Buckholtz, Jeffrey D. Schall, Rene Marois, Vanderbilt University - School of Law & Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Neuroscience Program, Vanderbilt University - Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University - Department of Psychology, Date posted to database: March 4, 2010 [new to top ten]
4	187	'The Look in His Eyes': The Story of State v. Rusk and Rape Reform Jeannie Suk, Harvard University - Harvard Law School, Date posted to database: February 3, 2010 [6th last week]
5	179	Judging Police Lies: An Empirical Perspective Melanie D. Wilson, University of Kansas - School of Law, Date posted to database: January 11, 2010
6	163	A., B. & C. v. Ireland: 'Europe's Roe v. Wade'? Shannon K. Calt, Lewis & Clark Law Review, Date posted to database: January 24, 2010 [7th last week]
7	161	Doubting Free Will: Three Experiments John A. Humbach, Pace University School of Law, Date posted to database: January 12, 2010 [new to top ten]
8	158	ICC Jurisdiction Over Acts Committed in the Gaza Strip: Article 12(3) of the ICC Statute and Non-State Entities Yael Ronen, Minerva Center, Faculty of Law, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Date posted to database: January 11, 2010
9	139	The Undiscovered Country: Execution Competency & Comprehending Death Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier, CUNY School of Law, Date posted to database: February 5, 2010 [10th last week]
10	131	Juror Sentiment on Just Punishment: Do the Federal Sentencing Guidelines Reflect Community Values? James Gwin, Unaffiliated Authors - affiliation not provided to SSRN, Date posted to database: February 21, 2010 [9th this week]

Next week's criminal law and procedure arguments

Summaries are from ScotusWiki, which also includes links to briefs and opinions below.

Monday

• Renico v. Lett: Whether the Sixth Circuit erred in holding that the Michigan Supreme Court failed to apply clearly established precedent by denying habeas relief on double jeopardy grounds when the state trial court declared a mistrial after the foreperson said that the jury was not going to be able to reach a verdict.

Tuesday

• Dillon v. United States: (1) Whether the Federal Sentencing Guidelines are binding when a district court imposes a new sentence pursuant to a revised guideline range under 18 U.S.C. § 3582. (2) Whether during a § 3582(c)(2) sentencing, a district court is required to impose sentence based on an admittedly incorrectly calculated guideline range.
• Barber v. Thomas: Does “term of imprisonment” in Section 212(a)(2) of the Sentencing Reform Act, enacting 18 U.S.C. 3624(b), unambiguously require the computation of good time credits on the basis of the sentence imposed?

Wednesday

• Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder:  Whether a person convicted under state law for simple drug possession (a federal misdemeanor) has been “convicted” of an “aggravated felony” on the theory that he could have been prosecuted for recidivist simple possession (a federal felony), even though there was no charge or finding of a prior conviction in his prosecution for possession.
• Robertson v. U.S. ex rel. Watson: Whether an action for criminal contempt in a congressionally created court may constitutionally be brought in the name and pursuant to the power of a private person, rather than in the name and pursuant to the power of the United States.

Meyer on Extraterritorial Application of U.S. Law

Jeffrey A. Meyer (Quinnipiac University - School of Law) has posted Dual Illegality and Geoambiguous Law: A New Rule for Extraterritorial Application of U.S. Law (Minnesota Law Review, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Scores of federal criminal and civil statutes are “geoambiguous” - they do not say whether they apply to conduct that takes place in foreign countries. This is a vital concern in an age of exploding globalization. The Supreme Court regularly recites a “presumption against extraterritoriality” but just as often overlooks it and opts to apply geoambiguous law abroad. The Court’s inconsistency bespeaks a deep divide among scholars. Judicial unilateralists favor liberally imposing U.S. law abroad to respond to unwanted effects from foreign conduct. Judicial territorialists favor restraint and a return to traditional territoriality to avoid international conflict. And judicial interests-balancers favor multi-factored, case-by-case consideration of whether it is “reasonable” to apply geoambiguous law abroad.

This Article advances a new approach - a proposed rule of “dual illegality” to govern how courts apply geoambiguous laws. Under a dual illegality rule, U.S. courts should decline to apply geoambiguous laws to penalize or regulate conduct that occurs in the territory of a foreign state unless the same conduct is also illegal or similarly regulated by the law of the foreign territorial state. A similar rule of dual illegality has worked for many decades as a limitation in countless criminal extradition treaties. A dual illegality rule would revitalize traditional territoriality values as a limiting principle on U.S. assertion of its law abroad, while also allowing extraterritoriality when there is the least likelihood of provoking political dispute. The response to greater globalization should be less jurisdictional contestability and more reliance on rules that do not invite judges - as the rules wrongly do now - to engage in policy-like assessments of the needs or interests of the United States in having its law applied to activity abroad. Courts should apply a dual illegality rule to decide the scope of geoambiguous law.

Hessick & Hessick on Appellate Problems after Booker

F. Andrew Hessick III and Carissa Byrne Hessick  (both of Arizona State University - Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law) have posted Five Years of Appellate Problems after Booker (Federal Sentencing Reporter, Vol. 22, p. 85, 2009) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

In United States v. Booker the U.S. Supreme Court rendered the Federal Sentencing Guidelines advisory rather than mandatory, committing sentencing decisions to the discretion of the district courts. But the Booker decision did not end with discretion. The Supreme Court also instituted appellate reasonableness review of all sentencing decisions. These two aspects of Booker’s remedy – discretion in district courts and appellate review for reasonableness – pull in opposite directions. Discretion means choice; there is no single correct sentence in any case. Substantive appellate review, by contrast, limits that choice. Appellate review promotes uniformity, and in particular adherence to the Guidelines, by cabining discretion. Since Booker, the Court has not resolved the tension between discretion and appellate review. Instead, the Court has sought to maintain district court discretion, while at the same time using appellate review to promote adherence to the Guidelines. This commentary notes that the incompatibility of discretion and appellate review has manifested itself in at least three different ways. The Court has issued decisions with conflicting language, abandoned ordinary features of presumptions and appellate review, and suggested imprecisely defined new legal tests. This commentary identifies instances where these developments have occurred and traces the resulting confusion and conflict in the circuits.

Conference on due process for victims

The National Crime Victim Law Institute will hold its ninth annual conference in Portland on June 10-11. The topic is "Due Process for Victims: Meaningful Rights in Every Case." The program listing participants is here.

Execution stay in DNA case

ScotusBlog has the story on Skinner v. Switzer here:

Skinner is seeking to raise an issue that the Justices had agreed to review last Term in District Attorney’s Office v. Osborne (08-6).  The Court decided the Osborne case on June 18, but left unresolved that specific issue.  The question is whether a state inmate seeking access to and testing of DNA evidence may pursue that claim under civil rights law (Section 1983), rather than in a federal habeas challenge.  Skinner’s lawyers contend that he has tried unsuccessfully to use Texas state procedures for DNA testing, so his only remaining chance to get it is through a civil rights claim.

Argument transcript in Magwood v. Patterson

is here.

Bowers on Discretion

Josh Bowers  (University of Virginia School of Law) has posted Commonsense Discretion on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Charging discretion is no monolith. Instead, prosecutors consider three sets of reasons to decline or pursue charges: legal reasons, administrative reasons, and equitable reasons. The conventional wisdom is that prosecutors are best positioned to evaluate these reasons. Consequently, prosecutors are granted almost unfettered charging discretion. More narrowly, when prosecutors decline or pursue charges for equitable reasons, they exercise their prerogative unchecked. This is defensible only if prosecutors are most competent to exercise equitable discretion. That question is almost never asked or critically analyzed. Instead, case law and commentators justify prevailing institutional design with reference only to uncontroversial understandings that prosecutors know most about legal merits and strategic priorities. In fact, several reasons exist to believe that prosecutors are ill suited to consider the normative merits of potential charges. First, professional prosecutors fail sufficiently to individualize cases, lumping them instead into legal boxes. Second, professional prosecutors prioritize institutional concerns over equitable particulars. Notably, prosecutors are least competent to adequately consider the equities in the precise types of cases in which commonsense discretion matters most. Specifically, in the petty-crime context, absolute enforcement of expansive code law is both undesirable and impossible, and, consequently, measured exercises of equitable discretion are warranted and anticipated. Put simply, petty-crime enforcement should turn on thoughtful evaluation of equitable considerations, such as relative blameworthiness. Legal guilt, by contrast, is often peripheral (or, in any event, presumed). In this way, easy legal cases may raise tough normative questions. And prosecutors have no special claim to know the answers, as the novel data that I provide help to show.

Sentence Length and Sentence Venue

Ellen Podgor has an interesting post at White Collar Crime Prof questioning whether the increased length of prison sentences for white collar crimes should impact the security level of the prison at which they must be served.

Exum on Possession of Child Pornography

Jelani Jefferson Exum (University of Kansas School of Law) has posted Making the Punishment Fit the (Computer) Crime: Rebooting Notions of Possession for the Federal Sentencing of Child Pornography Offenses (Richmond Journal of Law and Technology, 2010) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Sexual exploitation of children is a real and disturbing problem. However, when it comes to the sentencing of child pornography possessors, the U.S. federal system has its problem as well. This Article adds to the current, heated discussion on what is happening in the sentencing of federal child pornography possession offenses, why nobody is satisfied, and how much the Federal Sentencing Guidelines are to blame. At the heart of this Article are the forgotten players in the discussion – the computer and the internet – and their role in changing the realities of child pornography possession. This Article argues that the computer and internet are important factors in understanding both the victimization of the children portrayed in the illegal images and the formulation of appropriate punishment for those who view and possess such images. However, little attention has been paid to the effect computer behavior and the internet have on the actual manner in which offenders possess child pornography and little thought given to what punishment is warranted given the characteristics of that possession. While some district judges are thinking about these issues when they sentence, they have little guidance from experts in the fields of punishment and sexual crimes because sentencing guidance provided to judges has largely been restricted to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Unfortunately, in promulgating Guidelines for child pornography possession offenses, the United States Sentencing Commission has largely treated child pornography possession offenses as traditional possession crimes, and has been increasingly influenced by Congress’ response to political pressure to severely punish such offenders without regard to the stated purposes of punishment. Now that the Guidelines are no longer mandatory, many judges are forgoing the Guidelines’ advice when it comes to sentencing the possessors of child pornography and forging out on their own. Critics say that those judges are being too lenient. While there may be truth to that argument, what is even more apparent is that judges are ill-equipped to respond to the punishment needs of this group of offenders, critics of lenient sentences are discounting the faults in the Guidelines, and the computer and internet have been causing all of the controversy without being a big part of the discussion. A system reboot is in order.

This Article recognizes that child pornography possessors should be punished for the harm and danger that the offense creates and the exploitation that the offense represents. Ultimately, though, this Article argues that any enhancements to child pornography possession sentences should reflect aspects of the offense that actually make the offender more harmful than the typical child pornography possessor. To make this argument, the Article will introduce the genuine problem of the sexual exploitation of children that this country faces. It will explain the specific federal crime of child pornography possession and the methods taken to commit the crime. Further, the Article discusses the sentencing of child pornography possessors, explaining the current Federal Sentencing Guidelines approach, the rebellion of district judges against the Guidelines’ advisory sentencing ranges, as well as the criticism levied at those judges. After exposing the system failure that requires a rebooting of the sentencing approach, the Article proposes a new manner of thinking about child pornography possession as a computer crime that is very different from ordinary possession crimes. This new approach seeks to understand the internet and computer in order to develop a system of punishment that will at least move toward achieving the congressionally-identified goals of punishment. Ultimately, it is not the purpose of this article to suggest an appropriate range of sentences for child pornography possession; nor is the goal necessarily to have the Guidelines ranges for child pornography possessors reduced. Rather, this Article emphasizes that finding a method of giving meaningful guidance to district judges in order to appropriately punish child pornography possessors is necessary, and that this is impossible to do without making the punishment fit the realities of internet and computer crimes.

Today's crim law/procedure cert grants

Summaries from ScotusBlog, which links to briefs and opinions below:

• Connick v. Thompson: Does imposing failure-to-train liability on a district attorney’s office for a single Brady violation undermine prosecutors’ absolute immunity?
• Belleque v. Moore: (1) Whether the Fulminante standard — that the erroneous admission of a coerced confession at the trial is not harmless — applies when a collateral challenge is based on a defense attorney’s decision not to move to suppress a confession prior to a guilty or no contest plea, even though no record of a trial is available for review, and (2) even if it does, is it “clearly established Federal law” for purposes of 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1).

"Victory for U.S. on detainees"

ScotusBlog has the story here:

The Supreme Court voted on Monday to leave intact a lower court ruling that took away almost all of the power of federal judges to block, even temporarily, the transfer of detainees out of Guantanamo Bay.  The Court, in a brief order, denied review of the D.C. Circuit Court’s ruling in April in Kiyemba v. Obama (Supreme Court docket 09-581), now informally known as “Kiyemba II.”  This marked a significant victory for the federal government, enhancing its authority to decide when and where to send detainees that are cleared for release from confinement without interference by federal judges and without challenge by detainees’ lawyers.

This week's crim law/procedure argument

Summary of issue is from ScotusWiki, which also links to briefs and opinions below:

Wednesday

• Magwood v. Patterson: When a person is resentenced after having obtained federal habeas relief from an earlier sentence, is a claim in a federal habeas petition challenging that new sentencing judgment a “second or successive” claim under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b) if the petitioner could have challenged his previous sentence on the same constitutional grounds?