UPDATED 11:40 a.m.
The Supreme Court on Monday issued an orders list showing no new cases were granted review. Among the cases denied review was an attempt to test the constitutionality of the three-drug procedure that most states and the federal government use to carry out executions by lethal injection.
That case, Abdur’Rahman v. Bredesen (05-1036) appeared to be a clear-cut test of that method, in a case with a full record and the lack of a last-minute challenge before an execution. The Court’s denial was thus a clear signal that the Court is unprepared, for now at least, to review the claim that the particular drug protocol can result in severe pain to the individual being put to death.
Among the cases that the Court considered at its private Conference last Thursday, but on which it took no action Monday, were two cases testing whether the 2003 decisions on the use of race in college entry programs apply to student assignment plans in K through 12 public schools (Parents Involved v. Seattle School District [05-908] and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education [05-915]). The Court has considered those appeals five times, and is expected to do so again on Thursday, according to the Court’s electronic docket.
Among the Court’s other orders, it asked the U.S. Solicitor General to file the views of the government on removal of cases from state to federal court, when a lawsuit against a private entity may implicate the actions of federal officials or agencies. The specific question is whether a private company that has been sued in state court may shift the case to federal court for trial, on the theory that it was “acting under” government direction when it voluntarily took an action that federal officials appeared to want but did not mandate.
The case, Watson v. Philip Morris (05-1284), is an appeal by two Arkansas women, seeking to have sent back to state court a lawsuit they have filed against Philip Morris for its advertising on the tar and nicotine content of two brands of “light” cigarettes. At issue in the case is the scope of a law, dating back to the early 19th Century, the so-called “federal officer removal” law. The two women’s appeal said there is “profound confusion” in lower courts about how to intepret that law.
The list of denied cases included some other significant appeals, including an attempt to challenge a police “drug sweep” of all the vehicles parking in a public school parking lot. The appeal in Myers v. Indiana (05-1202) sought to challenge such a sweep at a high school in Austin, Ind. The search turned up no drugs, but did lead to the discovery, in one student’s car, of a handgun. The student was charged with possession of a firearm on school property.
In another criminal case, the Court turned aside an appeal by the state of Pennsylvania challenging the power of federal courts to require testing of DNA evidence to support a challenge to a conviction, at least when a state has a law allowing prisoners to seek DNA tests. The appeal was in Beard v. Abdul-Salaam (05-1210), a capital case that is well-known in Pennsylvania after years of litigation following the fatal shooting in 1994 of a New Cumberland police officer who had gone to a downtown coin store to investigate a robbery in progress. The case was from the Third Circuit; Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., formerly a member of that Circuit Court, took no part in Monday’s order.
The Court declined to hear one of a number of pending sequel cases to the 2004 decision in Crawford v. Washington, which bars out-of-court statements in criminal trials if the person who made the statement is not available and the statement thus cannot be subjected to cross-examination. The new case was New York v. Goldstein (05-1193), testing whether the Crawford decision applies to criminal trial testimony by an expert witness who testified about out-of-court infomration forming the basis for that witness’ expert opinion. The case is a celebrated one, involving a mentally disturbed man, Andrew Goldstein, who was convicted of pushing a young women to her death in front of an oncoming subway train. Prosecutors at his trial called a forensic psychiatrist to testify about his mental condition. Over defense objections, the doctor testified about statements made to her by individuals who knew Goldstein. New York’s Court of Appeals found the use of that testimony violated Crawford, and ordered a new trial.
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