supreme court

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The NC Supreme Court’s Recent Substitute Analyst Cases

If you’re on my listserv, you know that the NC Supreme Court recently issued several confrontation clause decisions, all dealing with substitute analysts (if you’re not on my listserv, you can sign up here for my case summaries). I’ve previously written (here) about Williams v. Illinois, the US Supreme Court’s most recent confrontation decision on … Read more

The Supreme Court as a Hot Bench

Chief Justice Roberts recently noted that the Supreme Court is a “hot bench,” meaning a court that frequently interrupts lawyers’ presentations with questions. Indeed, he suggested that the Court, himself included, has gone too far in that direction, allowing lawyers too little opportunity to say what they deem most important. His remarks on the subject … Read more

Book Review: My Beloved World

I recently finished Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s autobiography, My Beloved World. It’s a terrific book and an interesting companion to another outstanding Supreme Court memoir, Justice Clarence Thomas’s My Grandfather’s Son. In a nutshell, My Beloved World traces Justice Sotomayor’s life from her early childhood in the Bronx through her confirmation as a federal district court … Read more

Florida v. Jardines: Bringing a Drug Dog to the Front Porch Is a Search

Today, most Supreme Court watchers are focused on the oral argument in the same-sex marriage cases. But the Court also released an important opinion in Florida v. Jardines, ruling that an officer conducts a Fourth Amendment search when he brings a drug dog onto the porch of a house to sniff the front door. Jardines … Read more

Supreme Court: Alert by a Trained or Certified Drug Dog Normally Provides Probable Cause

Yesterday, the Supreme Court decided Florida v. Harris, holding that when a trained and certified drug dog alerts on a vehicle, that normally provides probable cause to search the car, even if there are no records proving that the dog has previously performed well at detecting drugs in the field. I mentioned Harris in my … Read more

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California Tackles Substitute Analysts Post-Williams

In a paper here I analyze Williams v. Illinois, the U.S. Supreme Court’s latest confrontation decision on substitute analyst testimony. Because Williams was a fractured opinion in which no rationale garnered five votes, it didn’t answer a lot of questions. Three companion cases recently decided by the California Supreme Court show how one court is … Read more

Miller v. Alabama: Implications for North Carolina

My previous post summarized Miller v. Alabama, the Supreme Court’s recent case holding that a sentencing regime in which life without parole (LWOP) is mandatory for a murder committed by a defendant under age 18 violates the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. This post picks up where the previous one left off, discussing … Read more

Supreme Court Update

Today, I wanted to note two timely and interesting items concerning the United States Supreme Court. First, the Court just granted certiorari in Chaidez v. United States, a case that presents the issue of whether Padilla v. Kentucky applies retroactively. Padilla, of course, is the case that requires criminal defense attorneys, in some circumstances, to … Read more