Today in Supreme Court History: March 7, 1965

3/7/1965: Civil rights marchers are attacked by the police in Selma, Alabama. The event would become known as "Bloody Sunday."

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Briscoe v. LaHue, 460 U.S. 325 (decided March 7, 1983): police officers had immunity in prisoners’ suit alleging they were convicted due to officers’ perjury; testimony in court was not “acting under color of law” so no §1983 liability

Baldwin v. Franks, 120 U.S. 678 (decided March 7, 1887): federal statute, and not treaty with China guaranteeing safety of Chinese nationals, governed charges of beating and driving out of Chinese nationals from town of Nicolaus, California, and was outside the reach of Congress because interstate commerce not involved; opinion by Waite (in his typically dreary style); Harlan dissents (and as he often did, correctly)

Talley v. California, 362 U.S. 60 (decided March 7, 1960): striking down on Fourteenth Amendment grounds (incorporating First Amendment) city ordinance prohibiting distributing handbills which did not indicate who prepared or distributed them (handbills urged boycott of businesses which would not hire nonwhites)

Wooden v. United States, 595 U.S. 360 (decided March 7, 2022): burgling ten different units in storage facility on same night counted as only one prior offense for purposes of aggravation provision of Armed Career Criminal Act

South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301 (decided March 7, 1966): Voting Rights Act of 1965 is within Congress’s powers to enforce Fifteenth Amendment (provisions at issue were elimination of poll tests, presence of federal inspectors, etc.)

Federal Power Comm’n v. Tuscarora Indian Nation, 362 U.S. 99 (decided March 7, 1960): Indian lands were owned in fee simple and were not “reservations” excluded from eminent domain; New York could condemn and flood land for hydroelectric project (with just compensation)

ICC v. Delaware, Lackawanna & Western R.R. Co., 216 U.S. 531 (decided March 7, 1910): ICC can order main line to install switch connection upon request of shipper but not on request of lateral line carrying only passengers within state

Wearry v. Cain, 577 U.S. 385 (decided March 7, 2016): prosecution’s duty to disclose exculpatory information, Brady v. Maryland, 1963, includes statements from witnesses casting doubt on credibility of prosecution’s main witness

[SRG2]

I wonder how much compensation the Tuscarora Indians actually received and whether the amount was just.

[John F. Carr]

On Wearry v. Cain: A recent decision of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts points out that a full disclosure rule may require prosecutors to notify defendants of every time a witness' testimony was not accepted by a judge. A "work to rule" response could have prosecutors providing thousands of pages of records in every case. The vast majority would not be explicit statements that an officer lied. Maybe he didn't have a good view of the disputed event. I understand this was a technique used in litigation before electronic discovery tools. The one page of printed paper saying "we did it" is buried in a hundred thousand pages of boring office memos.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

"police officers had immunity in prisoners’ suit alleging they were convicted due to officers’ perjury; testimony in court was not “acting under color of law” so no §1983 liability"

Are you *&^%ing kidding me?

[Frank Drackman]

Bloody Sunday, DemoKKKrat Government trying to keep peoples from voting, some things never change.

[Syd Henderson]

Pot: "Gee, that kettle is black."

[SRG2]

Re: Michael Wearry – he was eventually freed
https://reason.com/2022/05/13/louisiana-police-prosecutor-fabricated-evidence-michael-wearry-sentenced-to-death-lawsuit-scott-perrilloux-marlon-foster/

And of course Thomalito, willing accessories to judicial murder, dissented.

Which academic clown was it who hailed Thomas as one of the greatest justices? I don't see how someone who is willing to let an innocent man be executed can be so described.

[Syd Henderson]

Calabresi. There was some debate whether he’d been hacked or some kind of satirist, but it seems he really is clueless.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Which would be more damning -- that a law professor actually is writing (and a "legal" blog is publishing) that rubbish, or that this blog's quality control has enabled an imposter to operate this long?

Either way . . . carry on, clingers!

[The Margrave of Azilia]

“And of course Thomalito, willing accessories to judicial murder, dissented.”

I suspected your summary may not have done full justice to the dissent, and I was right.

Alito, joined by Thomas, said merely that the case should have been briefed and argued, not reversed summarily as the majority did. The dissenters specifically *didn’t* say the conviction was OK; they simply wanted to have a full Supreme Court hearing.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/577/385/

[SRG2]

...which hearing would then have resulted in Thomalito dissenting on the grounds of deference to state courts. Thomas in particular has too much previous to give him any credit for good faith.

[David Nieporent]

It would be easier to credit them for good faith if they were consistent in this view, but they have no qualms about summary reversals of denials of QI.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Are these direct appeals or habeas corpus cases?

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Hypothetical outrages are the worst!

In itself, the dissent was quite plausible, you’re just assuming whatever they say must be for an evil reason.

[LawTalkingGuy]

There actually is some context here that supports that assumption.

Louisiana, particularly the New Orleans District Attorney's Office formerly led by Harry Connick Sr., had been committing Brady violations all over the place, and the Louisiana courts didn't really do anything about it. So when you get a Brady case from LA at this time after knowing the abuses that were shown in Smith v. Cain (where Thomas dissented) and Connick v. Thompson (where Thomas wrote an extremely obtuse and mean-spirited majority opinion denying 1983 relief to a man on death row because of a lot of Brady violations), you can understand why the majority of the Court was ready to summarily reverse on this issue.

Given that context, dissenting from summary reversal can't be totally taken as a good faith desire to grant cert instead of a "fuck-em" attitude, at least as far as Thomas in concerned. Alito, to his credit (yuck), has occasionally been willing to join majorities that reverse criminal cases where there have been egregious due process violations, that leave Thomas in dissent.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Giving both sides a full hearing hardly seems horrible, no matter how evil Harry Connick, Jr. may be.

And these look like habeas cases, where Congress has imposed limitations on federal review.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Sr. And again, the request for review isn't in good faith, because they already knew what was going on in LA courts regarding Brady. Alito and Thomas wanted to delay relief and find a way to deny on the merits because they hate due process. It wasn't a sincere request.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Lacking your intimate knowledge of those two justices, I can't say whether or not their desire for a full Supreme Court hearing for both parties was in good faith.

[Frank Drackman]

What? no insults about my Horror-cost surviving Mom? It wasn't Repubiclowns who fractured John Louis's Skull