Court: No ban on lawyering by telephone
on Jan 7, 2008 at 11:54 am
In a summary decision, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that it has never required defense lawyers to be physically on hand during every stage of a criminal court proceedings, and thus has never found it unconstitutional for a lawyer to take part in a plea hearing by speaker phone. The unsigned ruling came in the case of Wright v. Von Patten (07-212; opinion here). The Court said it was leaving “for another day” the issue of whether “telephone practice” was legally problematic, finding that all that was necessary to decide this case was that there was no ban on a speaker phone appearance that could be found in prior Court precedents.
The ruling came in a case involving a claim that such an appearance results in ineffective performance by a defense lawyer. Even if it is the case that “a lawyer physically present will tend to perform better tha one on the phone, it does not necessarily follow that mere telephone contact amounted to total absence or ‘prevented counsel from assisting the accused,” so as to raise a constitutional problem.
In another summary action in a case involving a claim of ineffective defense lawyering, the Court ordered dismissed a case it had agreed to hear — Arave v. Hoffman (07-110; opinion here) — because the individual involved has abandoned a claim that counsel was ineffective during plea bargaining. The case tested the constitutional standard to be applied to convicted individuals’ claim that defense counsel performed in a flawed way during plea negotiations; it also raised the question of the proper remedy if such a flaw was found to exist. The Court had agreed on Nov. 5 to hear the case.
In Monday’s orders, issued after the Court returned from a four-week holiday recess, showed no new cases granted review beyond the six announced last Friday following the year’s first Conference of the Justices. The Court returned to lower courts a long list of federal sentencing cases, to apply this Term’s new rulings on sentencing judges’ discretion and appeals courts’ authority regarding the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines.
The Court asked the U.S. Solicitor General to offer the federal government’s views on Clark County, Nev., v. Vacation Village (07-373), a case testing whether federal law bars states from recognizing a property owner’s rights to compensation for use of navigable airspace up to 500 feet above the property. The appeal by Clark County contended that a Ninth Circuit Court ruling raises the prospect of billions of dollars in compensation payments for flights through airspace above private property.
In a brief order, the Court dealt a small rebuff to the Solicitor General, refusing to allow that office to file part of a post-argument brief in the Guantanamo Bay detainee cases. The order allowed both sides to file supplemental briefs on whether historically a court hearing a common law habeas claim by a prisoner would allow the prisoner to test the government’s reasons for holding that person in custody. Detainees’ lawyers filed their added brief to contest the Solicitor General’s interpretation at oral argument of the meaning of earlier cases in Britain. The Solicitor General answered that point in the first part of a supplemental answering brief, but then added a second part to offer “a brief response” to two other arguments detainees’ lawyers had made at the hearing on Dec. 5 — one involving the interpretation of earlier cases, the other involving the scope of a right to a lawyer in a D.C. Circuit Court review of detainee rights. The Court’s order denied the filing of the second part, without giving a reason.
Among the more significant denials of review, in a long list of denials, were a refusal to rule on whether the U.S. Superfund law, governing cleanup of hazardous waste sites, applies to the operations of a foreign company if its dumping has an impact within the U.S. (Teck Cominco Metals v. Pakootas (06-1188) and to reopen constitutional issues over how far Congress may go to change the law governing copyright of creative works without violating the First Amendment (Kahle v. Mukasey, 07-190). In both cases, the Solicitor General had urged the Supreme Court not to hear the appeals.
The Court also declined to hear two appeals raising procedural issues in a case involving the constitutionality of Michigan’s ballot measure ban on so-called “partial-birth abortions.” The Sixth Circuit Court struck down the ban. Neither of the appeals, however, raised questions about that result: one was an appeal about the right to intervene, the other about whether the Circuit Court should have sought state court views on the law before ruling. The cases were STTOP v. Northland Family Planning Clinic (07-291) and Cox v. Northland Family Planning Clinic (07-313).
Here are the key issues in other cases denied review:
Dickinson v. Collier (07-197) — scope of the right to bring a private lawsuit against state officials for damages for disclosing private information taken from driver’s licenses and auto registrations.
McFarling v. Monsanto (07-241) — whether an individual infringes on patent rights by buying a patented product, then recycling products that result from it, an issue arising over replanting of seeds that are produced by a patented genetically modified soybean.
WKB Associates v. Fair Housing Council (07-421) — seeking clarification of the right of equal housing advocacy groups to bring lawsuits to challenge apartment projects as failing to accommodate the disabled.
Schriro v. Lambright (07-452) — testing the role that evidence that may suggest to a jury that they impose a criminal sentence other than death may play in the sentencing phase, when it had no direct link to the crime itself.
Flint v. Dennison (07-459) — whether the First Amendment strict limits the power of state colleges or universities to put a dollar limit on what a student may spend on a campaign for student government office.
Hartmann v. Burris (07-478) — test of the types of state court challenges to convictions or sentences that result in postponing the one-year filing deadline for a federal habeas claim.
Covenant Media v. North Charleston, SC (07-587) — whether a billboard law that does not regulate what message is depicted is unconstitutional if it does not provide a prompt way to challenge a denial of a permit to put it up.
