Today’s Re-Lists (and Friday’s Conference)

By Amy Howe
on Oct 1, 2007 at 3:17 pm

Three cases that were slated for consideration at last Monday’s conference have been re-listed for the upcoming conference on Friday, October 5:

No. 06-1616, Chester v. Texas, a capital case presenting the question whether the “Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’ standard for determining mental retardation of a capital defendant violates the Court’s decision in Atkins v. Virginia”;

No. 06-1716, Rockstead v. City of Crystal Lake, presenting the question whether “the Court should reconsider the state-litigation requirement of Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City . . . whereby a Fifth Amendment takings claim is not ripe in federal court until the landowner first seeks and is denied compensation in state court”; and

No. 06-11488, Ordinola v. Hackman, a case out of the Fourth Circuit involving the political offense exception to extradition. Petitioner, a Peruvian national and former member of a special paramilitary group formed to fight the Shining Path terrorist group, is accused of murdering noncombatants on four separate occasions.

You can access the cert. papers for both Chester and Rockstead here.

Also, we’ve learned that last week Don Verrilli, counsel to the petitioner in No. 07-303, Taylor v. Crawford, filed a motion (available here) to expedite consideration of the petition in his case, which – like No. 07-5439, Baze v. Rees, in which the Court granted cert. last week – deals with the constitutionality of a state’s lethal injection protocol. The motion to expedite is also expected to be considered at Friday’s conference.