“The early months of the Supreme
Court term are deceptively calm to
most observers, but to those who
understand the quiet workings of
the highest court in the land, it has
been an exciting start.”
ALL RISE
Although we have yet to see much in the way of
opinions handed down, the October 2017 U.S.
Supreme Court term is well underway. Here, we
examine recent decisions or pending cases involving
habeas corpus, the “travel bans,” religious freedom,
and searches and seizures.
On November 6, the Court issued two per curiam opinions — Dunn v.
Madison, No. 17-193 and Kernan v. Cuero, No. 16-1468 — both of which
discussed aspects of federal habeas law, which is the law that governs efforts
by state prisoners to challenge the constitutionality of their convictions in
federal court. Prisoners face a very high legal standard when making such
appeals, and the Court found petitioners in both of these cases had failed to
meet that standard.
Anti-death penalty advocates were watching Dunn especially close. In that
case, the petitioner, Vernon Madison, faces execution for the 1985 murder
of a police officer. During post-conviction proceedings, experts testified
that although Madison understood his crime and the pending execution
By Sarah R. Coats, MPS, RP
relating thereto, he could not remember committing
the murder itself. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals
found Madison’s argument that the Eighth Amendment
prohibited executing a person who is mentally
incompetent sufficiently persuasive to grant him habeas
relief. The Supreme Court reversed, explaining that the
case law on which the Eleventh Circuit relied did not
adequately establish that the inability to remember a
crime constituted mental incapacity, especially where
the prisoner still understood his conviction and the
subsequent punishment. In what has almost become
a matter of tradition whenever a death penalty case
is before the Court, Justice Breyer authored his own
concurrence to again opine on the need to revisit the
constitutionality of the death penalty itself.
Many Court watchers were eager to see how the
Justices would respond to arguments in consolidated
matters of Trump v. Hawaii (No. 16-1540) and Trump
v. International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) (No.
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