Petitions of the week

This week we highlight petitions pending before the Supreme Court that address, among other things, preliminary injunctions granting immediate possession of property to a pipeline company in a condemnation proceeding under the Natural Gas Act and whether a conviction for involuntary manslaughter violated the free speech clause of the First Amendment or the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.

The petitions of the week are:

Givens v. Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC
19-54
Issue: Whether district courts have the power, before a trial on just compensation, to issue a preliminary injunction granting immediate possession of property to a pipeline company in a condemnation proceeding under the Natural Gas Act.

Carter v. Massachusetts
19-62
Issues: (1) Whether a petitioner’s conviction for involuntary manslaughter, based on words alone, violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment when the petitioner’s communications, which were found to have caused the deceased’s suicide, did not constitute speech that was “an integral part of conduct in violation of a valid criminal statute,” Giboney v. Empire Storage & Ice Co.; and (2) whether the petitioner’s conviction violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment because in assisted- or encouraged-suicide cases the common law of involuntary manslaughter fails to provide reasonably clear guidelines to prevent “arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement,” McDonnell v. United States.

Garner v. Colorado
19-75
Issue: Whether the due process clause imposes any check on an eyewitness’s identification of a criminal defendant in the typically suggestive setting of trial when there was no police misconduct but there is nonetheless substantial reason to doubt that the witness would identify the defendant in a nonsuggestive setting.