Three cases of interest
on Jun 22, 2005 at 6:07 pm
The Supreme Court is showing some interest in three cases that were scheduled to be considered in its private session tomorrow, but now will not be: the Court has asked for responses to the petitions, and thus will not act on any of the three until it hears from the other side in each.
One is a police case, one a state claim for Medicaid reimbursement, and one a case involving the right of an accused defendant to access to a law library when he is representing himself. All three involve appeals by public officials, and all three involve conflicts in lower courts. Responses had been waived in each case, but on Monday of this week the Court explicitly called for responses.
The police case, Maine v. Patterson (04-1491), is an appeal by the state of Maine challenging a state Supreme Judicial Court ruling that a “seizure” occurs under the Fourth Amendment when a police officer taps or raps on the window of a car parked in a public place and asks the driver to roll down the window. The state claims a conflict among lower courts on the issue. The incident grows out of an arrest for operating under the influence, after an officer sought to investigate a car parked on the University of Maine campus in Orono.
In the Medicaid case, Arkansas Department of Human Services v. Ahlborn (04-1506), the Eighth Circuit limited the right of a state to recoup Medicaid payments it has made to an individual out of the proceeds of an insurance settlement for injuries in an auto accident. The state is only allowed to recover what it paid to cover medical care and services, not the full amount of a settlement needed to cover the Medicaid benefits it had provided, the Circuit Court ruled. A woman had received $215,645 in Medicaid benefits after she was injured, so the state claimed that full amount out of her settlement. The woman countered that the state was only entitled to $35,581 — the percent of her settlement that she received for medical expenses. The Eighth Circuit, rejecting the view of the federal government in support of the state, as well as the views of two states’ courts, awarded Arkansas only the smaller amount.
In the access to library case, Kane, Warden, v. Espitia (04-1538), the Ninth Circuit ruled that a poor defendant who is acting as his own lawyer has a constitutional right to access to a law library during trial — a decision it conceded conflicts with rulings by several other circuit courts. It ordered the retrial of a man convicted of carjacking who chose to represent himself after dismissing his public defender.
The response in each case is due July 20.
