The United States Supreme Court ruled Monday that the US Constitution forbids mandatory sentencing of life in prison without the possibility of parole for juveniles convicted of homicide.  The justices ruled 5-4 in Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs that such a sentencing structure violates the Eighth Amendment’s rule against cruel and unusual punishment.

In one case, 14-year-old Evan Miller was convicted of murder in Alabama after setting fire to a trailer, which killed his neighbor. The second case focused on Kuntrell Jackson, who was convicted of murder in Arkansas at age 14 following his participation in an armed robbery that led to a store clerk’s death.

Both cases were sentenced using the mandatory life-without-parole penalty in their respective states, which the SCOTUS ruling struck down. The Court’s decision also invalidates similar statutes in 27 other states.

Justice Elena Kagan delivered the Opinion of the Court, citing Graham v. Florida – which determined life-without-parole sentences for non-homicides unconstitutional – as a primary precedent for the ruling. Citing Graham, the Court’s opinion asserts, “that youth matters in determining the appropriateness of a lifetime of incarceration without the possibility of parole.”

The mandatory penalty schemes currently in issue prevent sentencers from considering a juvenile offender’s youth, disregarding the foundational opinion in Graham that imposing the most severe penalties on juveniles cannot proceed as though the offenders are not children.

Justice Samuel Alito Jr. presented an abridged version of his own dissent, joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, from the bench, calling the majority’s reasoning, “the personal views of five Justices.”

Justice Alito’s dissenting opinion heavily criticizes the Court’s majority view for including individuals of such a broad age range, particularly regarding defendants closer to 18 years of age, “The category of murderers that the Court delicately calls “children” (murderers under the age of 18) consists overwhelmingly of young men who are fast approaching the legal age of adulthood. Evan Miller and Kuntrell Jackson are anomalies; much more typical are murderers like Donald Roper, who committed a brutal thrill-killing just nine months shy of his 18th birthday.”

However, the Miller v. Alabama ruling does not exclude juveniles from ever being sentenced to life in prison without parole. The same “mitigating qualities of youth” that prevent automatic life-without parole sentences are also left to the discretion of sentencers on a case-by-case basis.

The written dissent from Justice Alito addresses that aspect of the opinion as well, instead asserting that the Eighth Amendment is worded so that, “it leaves questions of sentencing policy to be determined by Congress and the state legislatures—and with good reason.”

According to the Equal Justice Initiative, the Alabama-based non-profit organization that also provided legal representation for Miller and Jackson, over 2200 individuals are currently serving life-without-parole sentences for crimes committed under the age of 18.

The article Juvenile Life Without Parole Violates Eighth Amendment appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

On June 25 the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling rejecting most of the Arizona immigration law, known as SB1010. The only part of the law now remaining is the section that allows state and local officials to check the status of people who they have stopped or detained as long as they have “reasonable suspicion” that these individuals are in the country illegally.

One of the parts rejected by the Supreme Court includes making it illegal for illegal immigrants to not have a federal registration card which is already a misdemeanor nationally. SCOTUS also rejected the part of the law that made it illegal for illegals to work, apply for work, or to try to solicit work. SCOTUS also announced that allowing state and local officials to arrest illegals without warrant because they have committed “any public offense that makes the person removable from the United States” is no longer allowed as a part of the law.

Now the law states that officers must check with immigration officials before holding immigrants for reasons other than committing a crime. Arizona law enforcement can notify the federal officials about the suspected illegal status but cannot detain them in jail or charge them for their illegal status. However, while law enforcement cannot hold someone because they are illegal, while the officials are trying to determine the status of an individuals the amount of time they are detained cannot be determined. Kennedy, in the majority opinion, states, “it is not clear at this stage and on this record that the verification process would result in prolonged detention.”

Justice Kennedy delivered the majority opinion. Kennedy stated, “this authority rests, in part, on the National Government’s constitutional power to ‘establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization’ and its inherent power as sovereign to control and conduct relations with foreign nations…the federal power to determine immigration policy is well settled.” Further in the opinion Kennedy elaborates on this aspect of the problematic law: “[this law] would allow the State to achieve its own immigration policy. The result could be unnecessary harassment of some aliens…whom federal officials determine should not be removed. This is not the system Congress created.”

Yet Kennedy acknowledged the problems that Arizona is having stating, “Statistics alone do not capture the full extent of Arizona’s concerns.”

Arizona’s state government claims that it made the law because the federal government has failed to control immigration into the state. Arizona has had to deal with high costs of education and care of immigrants in recent years. The state government believes that this law would empower law enforcement to be able to deal with the immigration problems. Additionally, the law forced the federal government to face the problem of immigration.

However, opponents of the law stated that it criminalized law-abiding people because of their statuses. There was also the worry that the law would lead to racial profiling of legal Hispanics. In his majority decision Kennedy echoed a similar sentiment stating, “discretion in the enforcement of immigration law embraces immediate human concerns. Unauthorized workers trying to support their families, for example, likely pose less danger than alien smugglers or aliens who commit a serious crime. The equities of an individual case may turn on many factors, including whether the alien has children born in the United States, long ties to the community, or a record of distinguished military service.”

Justices Scalia, Alito, and Thomas delivered their own concurring and dissenting opinions. Scalia stated in his opinion, “as a sovereign, Arizona has the inherent power to exclude persons from its territory, subject only to those limitations expressed in the Constitution or constitutionally imposed by Congress.” Thomas supported Scalia and writes, “I agree with Justice Scalia that federal immigration law does not pre-empt any of the challenged provisions of S.B. 1070. I reach that conclusion, however, for the simple reason that there is no conflict between the “ordinary meaning” of the relevant federal laws and that of the four provisions of Arizona law at issue here.”

This decision will highly impact the creation of similar laws in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, and Utah.

After the Arizona law was passed Obama stated that the law, “threatened to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans” and sued the state of Arizona for overstepping its sovereign rights of the federal government. Oral arguments were heard in front of the Supreme Court on April 25, 2012.

Mitt Romney claimed to support the law and would have dropped the lawsuit against Arizona. According to USA Today Romney would then adopt the idea from Arizona of making life so difficult for immigrants that they self-deport.

The article Supreme Court Rejects Most of Arizona Immigration Law appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Eagan, Minnesota, U.S.A. - Best-selling authors and “textualist” authorities Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Bryan A. Garner have released their seminal treatise on deriving the meaning of authoritative texts: Reading Law: The Legal Interpretation of Texts, published by Thomson Reuters.

The publication of this book is momentous: it’s the first publication by a Supreme Court Justice in more than 140 years detailing a fully elaborated philosophy of judicial decision making.

Citing and analyzing several hundred judicial decisions, Scalia and Garner guide the reader through what they consider the most important principles of constitutional, statutory, and contractual interpretation. The authors challenge readers to think differently about the law by posing questions that perplex, enlighten, and reveal: Is a corporation entitled to personal privacy? If you trade a gun for drugs, are you “using a gun” in a drug transaction? If it’s illegal to “lay hands on” a priest, is it acceptable to kick him?

“Sometimes important legal questions come in surprising packages,” said Professor Garner. “The question ‘Is a burrito a sandwich?’ for instance, invokes the issue, ‘What would a competent user of the English language say?’ A Massachusetts court decided the question correctly: a burrito is no sandwich.”

Said Justice Scalia: “The goal in posing these unique yet fundamental questions in our new book is to help attorneys better understand how to present a client’s case to the judiciary by better understanding how judges interpret cases. This clarity serves us as citizens and lends a level of transparency to the American legal system that supports the rule of law.”

Scalia and Garner explore many of the most controversial issues in modern jurisprudence, such as: Which is more important, the spirit of the law or the letter of the law? Why is strict construction a bad thing? What is the true doctrine of “originalism”? How old is the doctrine and what are its limits?

Justice Scalia, with 25 years of service on the U.S. Supreme Court, is the foremost expositor of textualism in the world today. Bryan A. Garner, as editor in chief of Black’s Law Dictionary and author of Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage, is the most renowned expert on the language of the law. Together they explore the scholarly, substantive, and sublime dimensions of judging with wit and deep insight, reprising the formula they used in their popular 2008 collaboration, Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges.

Image Courtesy of   Mission Geneva

The article Scalia Publishes Book, First from SCOTUS in 140 Years appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Dallas, U.S.A. – The Supreme Court of the United States have declined to review an earlier appeals court decision clearing two Texas school principals of claims they restricted the free speech of students in the so-called “Candy Cane” case.

The Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the appeal in Doug Morgan, et al. v. Lynn Swanson, et al., No. 09-40373, follows an earlier ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that the principals should be shielded from the lawsuit based on qualified immunity.

In 2004, elementary students from the Plano Independent School District and their parents filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against Plano ISD and some of its employees based on claims that elementary school administrators restricted their rights to free speech by prohibiting the students from distributing religious-themed gifts at their schools.

Attorney Tom Brandt of the Dallas law firm of Fanning Harper Matinson Brandt & Kutchin represented Lynn Swanson, principal of Thomas Elementary School, and Jackie Bomchill, principal of Rasor Elementary School. Mr. Brandt notes that while some court watchers have characterized this as one of the most important First Amendment cases of the past decade, the core legal dispute always has been about the qualified immunity of the principal parties.

“There have been a number of people and organizations who have characterized this as a seminal First Amendment decision,” says Mr. Brandt. “However, as the Court has shown us in today’s decision, the core legal question was not about freedom of expression, but about the necessary protections for two outstanding educators.”

“This type of case is exactly why the tenet of qualified immunity is a part of our legal system. Educators must be allowed to make decisions that are in the best interest of an entire school without fear of individual retribution when the law is unclear,” adds Mr. Brandt. “This ruling brings a tremendous sense of relief to Ms. Bomchill and Ms. Swanson, who have been forced to deal with the specter of this case for far too long.”

While the Supreme Court’s decision brings the Morgan v. Swanson appeal to a close, other parts of the case are still to be decided at the appellate and district court levels.

The article Supreme Court Upholds Decision on “Candy Cane” Case appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.