Petitions to watch | Conference of March 3
on Mar 1, 2017 at 10:37 am
In its conference of March 3, 2017, the court will consider petitions involving issues such as whether applying Colorado’s public accommodations law to compel the petitioner to create expression that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage violates the free speech or free exercise clauses of the First Amendment; whether, when a police officer shoots an unarmed person in the back and the person testifies that he was merely walking away when shot, a court may grant summary judgment to the officer in a suit for excessive force by concluding that it is an “undisputed fact” that the person reached for his waistband just because the officer said he did; and whether 18 U.S.C. § 1596(a)(2) – which expressly establishes extraterritorial jurisdiction over sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1591 – is a valid exercise of Congress’ power under the foreign commerce clause when applied in a criminal case to order restitution from a foreign defendant to a foreign victim for conduct that occurred exclusively overseas.
Issue: Whether applying Colorado’s public accommodations law to compel the petitioner to create expression that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage violates the free speech or free exercise clauses of the First Amendment.
Issues: (1) Whether the hybrid nature of forfeiture proceedings supports the adoption of a clear and convincing standard of proof; (2) whether the Court of Appeals for the Ninth District of Texas at Beaumont’s rejection of the petitioner’s Eighth Amendment assertion violates due process; (3) whether the adjudicating and prosecuting tribunals’ direct pecuniary interests in the outcome of forfeiture proceedings infringe on the neutrality requirement of due process and create a culture of inherent conflict of interest; and (4) whether the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, Title 1, Chapter 59, as applied to this line of cases, is impermissibly vague in enumerating innocent-owner expectations.
Issue: Whether, when a police officer shoots an unarmed person in the back and the person testifies that he was merely walking away when shot, a court may grant summary judgment to the officer in a suit for excessive force by concluding that it is an “undisputed fact” that the person reached for his waistband just because the officer said he did.
Issue: Whether 18 U.S.C. § 1596(a)(2) – which expressly establishes extraterritorial jurisdiction over sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1591 – is a valid exercise of Congress’ power under the foreign commerce clause when applied in a criminal case to order restitution from a foreign defendant to a foreign victim for conduct that occurred exclusively overseas.
Issues: (1) Whether a special jury instruction as to Section 790.162, Florida Statutes, that an accused may be convicted of that offense with the “stated intent” to do bodily harm to any person or damage to the property of any person, amounts to an unconstitutional diminishment of the required criminal mens rea or scienter under the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Elonis v. United States; and (2) whether, under Elonis, Section 790.162, Florida Statutes, contains the necessary criminal element of mens rea or guilty knowledge instead of a mental state of mere negligence.
Issue: Whether the trial judge’s failure to recuse himself from the petitioner’s capital trial violated the due process clause.
