Supreme Court split delays resolution of dues question
As we await the appointment of a successor to the empty seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, one of the early casualties of a tie vote has already occurred. Many public employers and employees had their eyes on a recent case involving the California Teachers Association, because its outcome had the potential to alter the relationship between public employees and their union representatives that has existed since the 1970s. Instead of a scintillating analysis by the Court, a tie vote yielded only a one-line order that left the decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals intact along with the existing precedent from the 1970s and 1980s. See Friedrichs v. California Teachers Ass’n, No. 14-915.
Justice Kagan tells criminal defense bar to go big or go home
By Steve Klepper (Twitter: @MDAppeal)
In Luis v. United States, a fractured Supreme Court found that, in a prosecution for Medicare fraud, the federal government could not freeze untainted assets needed to retain defense counsel. The vote alignment was unusual, and none of the four opinions commanded a majority. The opinion drawing the most attention is Justice Kagan’s solo dissent, which Ian Millhiser has called “the most interesting opinion the Court has handed down this year.” That dissent, read together with a prior opinion on pretrial seizures, sends an important message to the criminal defense bar – go big or go home. Read More…
Second Amendment threatens state stun gun bans
By John Grimm
Guest contributor
Last week, in a short per curiam opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a Massachusetts woman’s conviction for possessing a stun gun, holding that it violated her Second Amendment rights. Caetano v. Massachusetts, No. 14-10078, — S. Ct. — (2016). For Maryland lawyers (and clients), the case is no mere academic matter; at least three jurisdictions have laws on the books banning stun guns: Defendants can get up to six months in jail for possessing a stun gun in Baltimore and Howard Counties, or 60 days in Baltimore City. It’s hard to imagine these ordinances surviving Caetano, at least as applied to simple possession of a stun gun without some additional element (such as possession by a minor or someone with a prior conviction for a crime of violence, which are both illegal in Maryland).
A new Supreme Court decision could affect State v. Syed
By Steve Klepper (Twitter: @MDAppeal)
At times, the attorneys’ arguments in the February 2016 hearing in State v. Syed followed a familiar script on the question of prejudice – that is, whether facts that previously didn’t make it into the record would have made a difference. Read More…
On remand from SCOTUS, Maryland Court of Appeals summarily affirms CSA in Kulbicki
By Steve Klepper (Twitter: @MDAppeal)
We have a breaking update in our coverage of the long-running Kulbicki case. Ten weeks ago, the Supreme Court summarily reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals of Maryland in Kulbicki v. State, 440 Md. 33 (2014), which had found ineffective assistance of counsel on grounds that the Court of Appeals raised sua sponte. Read More…
2015 Developments in Combating “Link Rot”
By Michael Wein
One of the consequences of the greater availability and ubiquity of legal opinions online is that authors can directly hyperlink to sources, including other online decisions, and thus provide immediate access to the source material. This has led to the unintended consequence of “link rot” in appellate decisions — that is, the inclusion of links that are no longer valid. As noted in a 2013 New York Times article, at that time, 49 percent of links in online U.S. Supreme Court decisions were inoperative.
Supreme Court Summarily Reverses Maryland Court of Appeals in Kulbicki
By Steve Klepper (Twitter: @MDAppeal)
Today the Supreme Court of the United States issued a per curiam ruling summarily reversing the four-to-three Court of Appeals decision in Kulbicki v. State, 440 Md. 33 (2014). Interestingly, the Supreme Court never issued an order calling up the state court record (see, for instance, the docket in Martinez v. Illinois) – even though Maryland is not a state where the record is available online.
It took the Supreme Court just 4½ pages to unanimously reverse. Read More…
Obamacare on Appeal: Statutory Construction of This Politically Charged Question Will Inevitably Be Called Judicial Activism
In June, I wrote here that law professors should use the Supreme Court’s reversal of a Fourth Circuit opinion (CTS Corp. v. Waldburger) as their case study to teach the complexity of statutory construction. But I fear that a subsequent pair of conflicting, high-profile opinions in the D.C. Circuit and Fourth Circuit construing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) is what many law professors will be using to teach statutory construction. Halbig v. Burwell, No. 14-5018 (D.C. Cir. July 22, 2014), rehearing en banc granted (Sep. 4, 2014), and King v. Burwell, No. 14-1158 (4th Cir. July 22, 2014), are attractive as important cases that present a pure question of statutory construction, but using them to teach statutory construction runs the risk that students will see statutory construction as a mere euphemism for partisan “judicial activism.” The opinions are best used to instead explore the precarious role of appellate judges in resolving politically charged controversies.
Coming Soon to the Supreme Court: Umaña v. United States?
On August 12, 2014, a divided Fourth Circuit denied a petition for rehearing en banc that had been filed by capital defendant Alejandro Umaña. Umaña had sought the rehearing en banc of a panel opinion, 750 F.3d 320 (4th Cir. 2014), in which a majority held that the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause does not apply to the sentencing selection phase of capital sentencing. Eight judges (Chief Judge Traxler, Judge Wilkinson, Judge Niemeyer, Judge King, Judge Shedd, Judge Duncan, Judge Agee, and Judge Floyd) voted to deny the rehearing en banc, while five (Judge Motz, Judge Gregory, Judge Keenan, Judge Wynn, and Judge Thacker) voted to grant the petition.
A leader in the MS-13 transnational criminal gang, Umaña was convicted in federal court of murdering two brothers (who were not affiliated with any gang) in a bar in Greensboro, N.C., after the brothers got into an argument with Umaña and other MS-13 members about the music that should be played on the jukebox. After the jury found Umaña eligible for the death penalty in the first portion of the sentencing phase, the proceeding moved to the sentencing selection phase. Over Umaña’s objection, the district court allowed the government to introduce hearsay testimony from Los Angeles police detectives concerning statements that MS-13 informants had given the detectives implicating Umaña in several unrelated murders in Los Angeles. Umaña argued that the Confrontation Clause required the government to produce the informants themselves at the sentencing selection phase. In a 2-to-1 decision, the Fourth Circuit panel (Niemeyer and Agee, with Gregory dissenting) affirmed the admission of the informants’ statements through the detectives.
Maryland Appellate Blog 