by TChris

If you're homeless in Los Angeles, the city doesn't want you on its sidewalks -- at least, not unless you're walking. The city passed an ordinance (unenforced for many years) that criminalizes sitting, laying, or sleeping on public sidewalks. That law narrows the options when homeless shelters are full -- a frequent occurrence in a city that is home to more than 80,000 people who lack homes on any given night. LA's Skid Row contains the largest concentration of the homeless in the country, but Skid Row parks are closed to the public at night. Where are the homeless who can't find shelter to sleep, if not on sidewalks?

As a result of the expansive reach of section 41.18(d), the extreme lack of available shelter in Los Angeles, and the large homeless population, thousands of people violate the Los Angeles ordinance every day and night, and many are arrested, losing what few possessions they may have.

Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit told Los Angeles that it may not criminalize the status of being homeless, or "acts that are an integral aspect of that status." Most people do not choose to be homeless, and the Eighth Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment prohibits the government from punishing individuals for sleeping on sidewalks when they have no other choice. As the linked article suggests, this "could be a far-reaching victory for homeless advocates."

by TChris

The Sixth Circuit has cleared the way for William Gregory to sue Louisville for acts that caused his wrongful conviction. Gregory was imprisoned for eight years before DNA tests demonstrated that he wasn't the man who raped one woman and threatened to rape another. Gregory contends that the police withheld evidence that would have helped him prove his innocence.

A three-judge appeals panel said Gregory presented evidence that the police department encouraged one-on-one "show-ups" -- in which police present one person to a witness and ask if he's the suspect -- knowing they are inherently suggestive, and that it failed to train officers on their duty to disclose evidence suggesting a suspect may be innocent.

"Show-ups" -- presenting the suspect to the victim and asking "is this the guy?" rather than including him in a line-up -- have long been recognized as unduly suggestive, but some police departments continue to use them, creating serious risks of misidentification.

by TChris

After arguing that the government is entitled to hold Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant, the Justice Department decided to prosecute him on criminal charges, much to the displeasure of the Fourth Circuit, which wondered whether the Justice Department changed its theory to avoid Supreme Court review of Padilla's claim that his detention as an enemy combatant was unconstitutional. If so, the strategy succeeded. The Court decided today, by a 6-3 vote, not to review Padilla's case.

by TChris

Elected city officials feel pressure to respond to constant constituent complaints about neighborhood drivers who speed or try to make it through an intersection as the light is turning red. The officials sometimes designate "traffic enforcement days," where officers are diverted from their routine duties and assigned to set up speed traps or watch for red signal violations. But it doesn't make sense to divert officers from more pressing duties for long periods of time, and cities don't want to spend the money to hire more traffic cops.

Some elected officials have responded to this dilemma by substituting cameras for cops. The cameras record violations and appropriate tickets are sent to the vehicle's owner. The idea works if the camera actually captures the driver's face, and if the driver is also the car's registered owner, but without a face shot, it's difficult to prove that the owner was actually the offending driver.

Minneapolis thought it would be clever to declare vehicle owners to be the presumptive drivers, while shifting the burden to the owner to prove that he or she wasn't the person who ran the red light. As the result of an ACLU of Minnesota challenge, Minneapolis has learned that it can't dismiss so readily the presumption of innocence, even in a traffic case.

There's a knock on your door. The police are there, asking if they can come in and search. You and your wife answer the door. Your wife says yes, you say no. Can the police come in and search?

The Supreme Court said "no" today -- when both parties are present and one objects, the police cannot come in.

- A divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the police cannot enter a home and seize evidence without a warrant when one occupant agreed to the search after the other occupant refused permission. By a 5-3 vote, the high court said the husband's refusal in a case from Georgia was clear, making the search unreasonable and invalid, despite his wife's approval for it.

The narrowly written ruling was a defeat for the state of Georgia and for the U.S. Justice Department, which had argued that the search of a residence should be allowed when one occupant consents, even if the other occupant objects.

Judge Alito did not participate. Roberts, Scalia and Thomas dissented. Souter, who wrote the majority opinion, criticized Roberts' dissent:

Under the dissent's view, he wrote, "The centuries of special protection for the privacy of the home are over."

by TChris

After suffering a reversal of accounting firm Arthur Andersen's conviction last year, the government has again been dealt an appellate defeat in a high profile white collar criminal prosecution. The Second Circuit yesterday vacated Frank Quattrone's convictions for obstructing justice and witness tampering. The court concluded that the jury instructions failed to make clear that a directive to destroy records violates the obstructing statute only if the person giving the directive knew that the records in question were being sought by the government. The instruction on witness tampering was similarly flawed.

Although the court was careful not to agree with Quattrone's contention that his trial judge was biased, the Second Circuit ordered the case reassigned, noting diplomatically that the proceedings had "taken a toll on all involved" and that some of the judge's remarks "could be viewed as rising beyond mere impatience or annoyance."

by TChris

The National Organization for Women sued abortion protestors, claiming that they had violated the Hobbs Act, a federal law that prohibits the obstruction of commerce by robbery or extortion. The Supreme Court in 2003 held that extortion requires a plan to obtain the property of another, and concluded that a woman's pursuit of an abortion was not the kind of property that extortion laws protect.

When the case went back to the Seventh Circuit, the court of appeals focused on whether the protestors violated a different prohibition in the statute: the use of physical violence in furtherance of a plan to violate the Hobbs Act. The court of appeals essentially held that the Hobbs Act prohibits any act of violence that affects commerce, whether or not the violence is tied to robbery or extortion. Thankfully, the Supreme Court today unanimously rejected (pdf) that expansive view of the Hobbs Act -- an interpretation that could have federalized any criminal act of violence against a business that has some connection to interstate commerce.

by TChris

Last year, TalkLeft highlighted a conflict between the administration's desire to appease religious groups and its refusal to cede ground in its unyielding war against drugs. Congress enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to protect certain religious practices, including the ingestion of controlled substances, which would otherwise be illegal. The Supreme Court held that the Act can't trump state drug laws, but the administration argued that Congress also lacks the authority to enact a religious exception to federal laws that punish the possession of hoasca (which contains the hallucinogenic substance DMT).

The Court was asked to decide whether the Act protects members of the New Mexico branch of a Brazilian church who want to ingest hoasca "as part of a four-hour ritual intended to connect with God." In a unanimous decision (Alito did not participate), the Court sided with the church.

In their first religious freedom decision under Chief Justice John Roberts, the justices moved decisively to keep the government out of a church's religious practice. In the decision, Roberts wrote that federal drug agents should have been barred from confiscating the hoasca tea of the Brazil-based church and that the Bush administration had failed to meet its burden under a federal religious freedom law to show that it should be allowed to ban "the sect's sincere religious practice."

Good news. The 9th Circuit today became the second circuit to declare the partial birth abortion bill unconsitutional.

A federal appeals court declared the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act unconstitutional Tuesday, saying the measure is vague and lacks an exception for cases in which a woman's health is at stake. The three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals became the second federal appeals court in the country to hold the law to be unconstitutional.

The bad news: When it reaches the Supreme Court, Judge Alito will be a sitting Justice.

by TChris

Lawyers rarely ask a federal judge to recuse himself or herself on the ground that the judge appears to be prejudiced. The judge will almost always say no, and the lawyer worries for the rest of the case (or career) that the judge's offense at being accused of prejudice against the client will result in even more prejudice against the lawyer. That is often not a risk worth taking.

Federal prosecutors took that risk when they sought the recusal of Judge Shira Scheindlin, who has presided in the perjury case against Osama Awadallah. The Second Circuit yesterday rejected their claim that Judge Scheindlin's remarks demonstrated an appearance of partiality in favor of Awadallah.

During oral arguments in December, prosecutors cited a 2004 article written by Scheindlin for a legal publication in which she said it was the duty of judges to protect individual rights in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They argued such public statements and pretrial rulings in Awadallah's favor had created an appearance of injustice in the case.

The Supreme Court ruled today in Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. (opinion here in pdf). In the opinion, authored by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the Court made it clear they were not writing new law on abortion. At issue was the New Hampshire parental notification law which the lower court had struck down as unconstitutional.

Rather than decide the issue, the Supreme Court said there were problems with the law and sent it back to the lower courts.

ScotusBlog opines that the decision could be viewed as limiting abortion rights:

If, in fact, that is the way the decision is applied by lower courts in this and other cases, it could amount to a narrowing of abortion rights. That is because it would amount as a legal matter to less reliance upon an individual doctor's professional judgment in individual cases, especially when the abortion option is not considered in a truly emergency situation, but is only deemed medically advisable for a given patient.

I echo TChris' sentiments on the Supreme Court's assisted suicide decision yesterday (opinion here).
If you haven't read about the case yet, the Washington Post has an easy to follow report:

The Supreme Court upheld Oregon's law on physician-assisted suicide yesterday, ruling that the Justice Department may not punish doctors who help terminally ill patients end their lives. By a vote of 6 to 3, the court ruled that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft exceeded his legal authority in 2001 when he threatened to prohibit doctors from prescribing federally controlled drugs if they authorized lethal doses of the medications under the Oregon Death With Dignity Act.

The case was not about the right to die, per se. The Supreme Court has previously ruled there is no constitutional right to die. States are free to enact their own laws on the issue. Oregon did that, with a law that had been upheld by state and federal courts. The issue before the Supreme Court was whether Ashcroft could extend the drug laws to punish doctors who provide lethal drugs to patients who have requested them so they can die on their own terms.

Right to life groups are already promising a pitch to have Congress pass a "John Ashcroft, MD" law...(my term, not theirs):