Today in Supreme Court History: May 1, 1871

5/1/1871: Knox v. Lee decided.

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Knox v. Lee (Legal Tender Cases), 79 U.S. 457 (decided May 1, 1871): forcing creditors to accept new (paper) money for preexisting debts is not a Fifth Amendment "taking" which applies only to physical property (as pointed out in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, 2021, "takings" are now more expansively defined)

Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (decided May 1, 1989): Title VII plaintiff doesn't have to prove but-for causation, just a motivating factor; defendant must show by preponderance a non-discriminatory reason for failure to promote (1991 statute devised a different test, as noted in Comcast Corp. v. National Association of African American-Owned Media, 2020, commented here on March 23)

Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela v. Helmerich & Payne Int'l Drilling Co., 581 U.S. 170 (decided May 1, 2017): (I didn't know until now that this was the official name of that country) plaintiff must show that property at issue (here, oil rigs) was actually taken in violation of international law so as to invoke jurisdiction of the court under the "expropriation" exception in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act; whether the property belonged to plaintiff is what is decided in "the merits phase of the litigation" (but isn't a showing of violation part of the "merits"?) (case was dismissed recently based on later appellate court holding that FSIA requires the property to be present in the United States, 2023 WL 1401372 (D. D.C., Jan. 31, 2023)

Arkansas Dept. of Health & Human Services v. Ahlborn, 547 U.S. 268 (decided May 1, 2006): I do a CLE presentation on this case, which means it's a boring topic: Medicare and Medicaid liens on personal injury settlements. Here, the Court holds that an Arkansas statute requiring recovery of the full Medicaid lien violates the prohibition on liens recovering "property" (42 U.S.C. §1395p) because it invades the part of the settlement not reasonably ascribable to medical expenses.

United States v. Robertson, 514 U.S. 669 (decided May 1, 1995): gold mine into which defendant invested ill-gotten RICO gains (from sale of cocaine) was involved in "interstate commerce" so as to satisfy RICO statute

Mallard v. United States District Court for Southern District of Iowa, 490 U.S. 296 (decided May 1, 1989): court can per 28 U.S.C. §1915(d) request (but not force) an attorney to represent indigent criminal defendant

Oklahoma v. Texas, 258 U.S. 574 (decided May 1, 1922): border of the ever-shifting Red River depends on the part of it that is navigable, a difficult question because at that point the "main channel" was a dry bed with streams around it; important because it involved oil and gas rights (both sides concede that all of the river bed belongs to Oklahoma; the map today shows the river and the border swing-dancing the whole way)

Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U.S. 143 (decided May 1, 1944): white man allegedly hired black man to kill his wife; the Court holds that the white man's confession was not voluntary (doesn't reach the question of the black man's confession); vacates white man's conviction and sends black man's case back to Tennessee Supreme Court re: prejudicial effect of white man's confession (I would imagine it would be substantial!) (it is odd that it was up to the jury to decide whether the confessions were voluntary; I thought this was a threshold issue for the judge to decide -- here, the Court disregards the jury's finding of voluntariness and does independent evaluation of voluntariness evidence, which seems backwards)

In re Permian Basin Area Rate Cases, 390 U.S. 747 (decided May 1, 1968): long decision (with 96 headnotes!!) affirming the Federal Power Commission's power to set rates and other requirements for gas drilled from the Permian Basin (areas of Texas and New Mexico)

Latta & Terry Constr. Co. v. British Steamship "Raithmoor", 241 U.S. 166 (decided May 1, 1916): admiralty jurisdiction extends to suit for damage to pier hit by vessel

[apedad]

Re: Ashcraft v. Tennessee

The rest of the story; unfortunately for Ashcraft and Ware they remained in custody until finally freed in June of 1946 after two more trials and a further clarification by the U. S. Supreme Court.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks for the add'l info, as always.

[SRG]

I was half expecting to read that they'd acquitted the white man and convicted the black man

[Dan Schiavetta]

It certainly seemed to be the way the case was going. They cared about vacating the white man's conviction but not the black man's.

[John F. Carr]

From Ashcraft v. Tennessee: "As to what happened in the fifth-floor jail room during this thirty-six hour secret examination the testimony follows the usual pattern and is in hopeless conflict." A footnote refers to the 1931 report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement. "The third degree is a secret and illegal practice."

While the Supreme Court is supposed to review the law and not the facts, and the trial court had expressly refused to rule the confession voluntary or involuntary, the court decided the interrogation was obviously coercive.

In modern Massachusetts practice the judge initially rules on the confession, as I gather he was supposed to do in Tennessee c. 1940. The jury is then instructed that the jurors must find the confession voluntary beyond a reasonable doubt before they may consider it. Since 2004, the jury is further instructed that lack of a recording of the alleged confession "permits, but does not compel" jurors to rule it was not voluntary. Like the U.S. Supreme Court in 1944, the Supreme Judicial Court in 2004 was deeply suspicious of what went on behind closed doors in police facilities.

Several years ago a police officer from Springfield was interrogating some young people in a jail cell in another town and didn't know he was being recorded. He threatened to frame them on drug charges, for example. That shed a lot of light on interrogation practices. I believe the officer was ultimately acquitted. Or should I say he beat the rap? Got away with it?

[Dan Schiavetta]

thanks

[John F. Carr]

On the RICO case, are there any reported decisions where the interstate commerce jurisdictional threshold was not met? The federal arson statute was construed not to apply to private dwellings even though they surely do involve interstate commerce in the modern legal sense.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Good question! I’m hardly an expert on the topic and there must be hundreds of reported decisions.

Given the stretching done in Robertson as to the gold mine, I doubt if interstate commerce would ever not be found. Even the Oscar Beregi character at the end of the Twilight Zone episode “The Rip Van Winkle Caper”, offering the last gold brick to the people in that futuristic car as he died, would have been prosecuted under RICO (had he lived): the car might have gone into another state afterward, with either his live or dead body.

[Magister]

It seems likely that whoever the gang robbed gold bricks from had engaged in interstate commerce, unless it was gold bricks from a local mine that were never sold elsewhere. I would be interested in a general discussion of RICO, but I never get in early enough to start a topic in the Thursday open threads.

Also, thanks to captcrisis and the many other commenters who have made these previously useless daily posts so worthwhile.

[F.D. Wolf]

In Knox v. Lee (1871), consolidated with Parker v. Davis (collectively the Legal Tender Cases), the Court upheld the constitutionality of the Legal Tender Act of 1862, which allowed the federal government to issue paper currency not backed by gold or silver. In doing so, it reversed its decision in Hepburn v. Griswold (1870), which it had just issued the previous year.

Hepburn had been a 5-3 decision. In the interim between the cases, Justice Robert Grier, who had been in the majority, died, and President Grant had appointed two new justices, William Strong and Joseph Bradley, who both joined with the Hepburn dissenters to form the new majority. It is ironic that the majority opinion in Hepburn and the lead dissent in Knox, arguing against the constitutionality of the Legal Tender Act, were both written by Chief Justice Salmon Chase, who, as President Lincoln’s Treasury Secretary, had fought to secure the passage of the Act by Congress.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks! (I summarized Hepburn here on Feb. 7.)

[SRG]

That Griswold gets about, no? 😉

[F.D. Wolf]

Is that a reference to Griswold v. Connecticut or National Lampoon's Vacation?

[SRG]

Now that you mention it, both 🙂

[Dan Schiavetta]

Every two years I fill out the attorney registration forms in the two states I'm admitted in, and there's language there about being available for pro bono work. It looks like technically I can be called. Fortunately I never have been.

Which is good. Pro bono should be only voluntary. On top of that, the attorney must certify that he/she has experience in the work. My picture of pro bono is some BigLaw partner blundering through landlord-tenant court, much to the disservice of the persons he's trying to help, and then writing up a self-congratulatory blurb about it on his firm's web site.

[Dan Schiavetta]

I don't know!

[David Nieporent]

Every two years I fill out the attorney registration forms in the two states I’m admitted in, and there’s language there about being available for pro bono work. It looks like technically I can be called. Fortunately I never have been.

New Jersey works very differently. It's routine, it's mandatory, and we get assigned cases utterly outside our practice areas. Worse, as in the civil war when conscripts could hire someone else to take their place, we can do that too. So BigLaw attorneys send some associate and call it training, whereas the solo practitioner just has to malpractice/IAC his or her way through a case.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Memory is that, circa 1985 or so, Massachusetts' Michael Dukakis sought to mandate pro bono criminal defense and the Mass Bar raised a 13th Amendment defense.

This was discussed in Mass Lawyers Weekly or something.

[Dan Schiavetta]

I wouldn't have the $ to finance any lawsuit. I'm better off accepting the assignment, screwing it up, and getting sued for malpractice. If the mistake exceeds the limit of my insurance, I'm judgment-proof.

[John F. Carr]

Over the past 20 years, there has been a shortage of public defenders in Hampden County (Springfield and Holyoke). At one point the public defenders effectively went on strike for higher pay. It wasn't formally a strike. Practically it was. The Supreme Judicial Court got involved at least twice. In 2004 the court ordered that people be released from jail if they were held too long without a lawyer. In 2019 the court overruled an order by a trial court judge assigning individual public defenders to defendants over their objections. By law a judge can only rule on eligibility for a public defender, not assign a specific lawyer to be one.

The 2019 case is Carrasquillo v. Hampden County District Courts. It includes a review of the history of appointed counsel in Massachusetts. Felony defendants got lawyers several years before Gideon v. Wainwright. Misdemeanor defendants got lawyers after that case.