This post was written by Chuck Kallendorf: "The United States Supreme Court, yesterday and the day before, issued rulings seen by some as further weakening defendants' Miranda rights.

Last Tuesday, the Court in Florida v. Powell held that Florida's alternative wording of the Miranda warning was acceptable, even though it does not explicitly state that a suspect has a right to have a lawyer present during questioning.

Maryland v. Shatzer, yesterday, established new, more permissive rules for police who want to question a suspect for a second time after the suspect invokes Miranda's right to remain silent.

Law.com this morning said that latter case in particular "weakens the so-called rule evolved from Edwards v. Arizona in 1981 , which stated that, once a suspect invokes Miranda, any subsequent waiver of the right triggered by a police request is deemed involuntary -- making further police questioning improper...

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Source: Hamilton County Law Library Blog, 25 February 2010. Reproduced with permission.

In the news: "Electronic privacy in the workplace is a tangled subject, with only a few sure footholds for employers. Attorneys are hoping a Supreme Court ruling will provide unifying guidance on employer monitoring of employee text messages in a case currently under consideration by the justices."

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Source: Law.Com's Daily Legal Newswire. 9 February 2010. Copyright 2009.  ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. Subscribe <http://store.law.com/registration/register.asp?subscribeto=nw>.

This post was written by Chuck Kallendorf: "The United States Supreme Court Tuesday reinstated the death penalty sentence for Frank Spisak's 1982 shooting spree at Cleveland State University, overturning a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in October 2006. ( Decision )

"(The Sixth Circuit)," the Court said, "erred in holding that the instructions and forms contravened Mills v. Maryland, in which this Court held that the jury instructions and verdict forms at issue violated the Constitution because, read naturally, they told the jury that it could not find a particular circumstance to be mitigating unless all 12 jurors agreed that the mitigating circumstance had been proved to exist... (and) Even assuming that Mills sets forth the pertinent 'clearly established Federal law' for reviewing the state-court decision in this case, the instructions and forms used here differ significantly from those in Mills: They made clear that, to recommend a death sentence, the jury had to find unanimously that each of the aggravating factors outweighed any mitigating circumstances, but they did not say that the jury had to determine the existence of each individual mitigating factor unanimously. Nor did they say anything about how--or even whether--the jury should make individual determinations that each particular mitigating circumstance existed. They focused only on the overall question of balancing the aggravating and mitigating factors, and they repeatedly told the jury to consider all relevant evidence. Thus, the instructions and verdict forms did not clearly bring about, either through what they said or what they implied, the constitutional error in the Mills instructions."

...

Full text and active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Hamilton Law Library Blog, 14 January 2010

This post was written by Chuck Kallendorf: "The U.S. Supreme Court released notice of revisions to brief and document preparation rules yesterday. They become effective on February 16, 2010.

The Court's announcement highlighted major changes as including:

• Reduction in the number of words allowed for a Reply Brief on the Merits...
• Changes to Rules 26and 34.1...
• additions to Rule 34...
• Rule 37...

Rules of the Supreme Court"

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Source: Hamilton County Law Library Blog, 13 January 2010

Posted by Bruce Carton: "It is somewhat hard to believe that 43 years after Miranda v. Arizona, the requirements for providing suspects with their legal rights could still be murky. Indeed, by now, grade-school kids can probably recite most of the now-famous "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be held against you in a court of law..." speech.

But the Supreme Court appears to consider the requirements for effective Miranda warnings unclear, and it heard oral argument on Monday in Florida v. Powell. According to the case, the police read Powell his Miranda rights straight from a standardized form they use:

You have the right to remain silent. If you give up this right to remain silent, anything you say can be used against you in court. You have the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any of our questions. If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer, one will be appointed for you without cost and before any questioning. You have the right to use any of these rights at any time you want during this interview.

Powell, however, argued that these warnings failed to advise him of one crucial thing: his right to have a lawyer with him throughout the entire time that any questioning was being done by law enforcement officers, not just "before answering questions."  As discussed in this post on The Briefcase blog, the Florida Supreme Court agreed with Powell, holding that the right to have an attorney present existed "at any time you want during" questioning. This right, however, was not stated on the standardized form used in the Florida jurisdiction in question, one of only a handful in Florida that failed to include it. The Briefcase writes that Monday's oral argument before the Supreme Court "resulted in a parsing of the Miranda decision on a scale usually observed in rabbinical debates about the Talmud." 

The SCOTUSblog also has a detailed account of the argument. The Florida attorney general's office reportedly argued that its Supreme Court had improperly used a "hypertechnical analysis of the warning's language." The Solicitor General's office joined with Florida, arguing that no particular form of warnings was constitutionally required. SCOTUSblog says that Justice Stephen G. Breyer seemed to disagree, however, reciting from the Miranda decision that the lawyer must be "with him during interrogation." Opting for a Catholic metaphor, Justice Scalia likened Powell's argument to debates over the number of "angels dancing on the head of a pin." Scalia stated that it was "quite fantastic" for Powell to argue that "if I knew that I could have an attorney present during the interview, well, that would have been a different kettle of fish and I would never have confessed."

You can read a transcript of the entire oral argument in Florida v. Powell here

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Source: Legal Blog Watch, 9 December 2009

From the site: "Church versus State issues are the basis for some very interesting U.S. Supreme Court cases. In this first edition of the Boston University School of Law podcast, host and media veteran, Dan Rea of WBZ-Radio 1030 gets beyond the legal documents and summary judgments in a conversation with BU Law Professor Jay Wexler, who brings those cases to life in his book, Holy Hullabaloos: A Road Trip to the Battlegrounds of the Church/State Wars. You will hear about the people and places involved in serious... and sometimes funny cases involving religion and the law.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:52 -- 19.8MB)"

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Legal Talk Network, 4 December 2009

Posted by Bruce Carton: "I thought we had completely maxed out on the Supreme Court geekiness with the baseball cards and then the oral arguments available on iTunes, but no... not even close. Today, I present you with the new gold standard in Supreme Court geekery: "FantasySCOTUS.net, the Premier Supreme Court Fantasy League."

FantasySCOTUS.net is the brainchild of Josh Blackman, who admits to being an "unashamedly big Supreme Court nerd." At the beginning of the October 2009 term, he writes, "a friend asked me to predict the outcome of several Supreme Court cases. After making my predictions, I thought it would be cool if Vegas took bets on Supreme Court cases like they do on sporting events. And then I wondered, why not a Supreme Court Fantasy League? FantasySCOTUS.net was born." He adds, "I know there are more people out there like me."

In this fantasy league, participants compete against friends, colleagues and adversaries to determine who has the greatest ability to predict the outcome of Supreme Court cases. At the end of the term, the winner "will receive the venerable title of the Chief Justice of Fantasy SCOTUS," not to mention the "Golden Gavel Trophy."

So put down your Justice Roberts trading card, take off your headphones playing Bush v. Gore, and make us all proud by bringing home the Golden Gavel Trophy."

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Source: Legal Blog Watch, 13 November 2009

From the e-newsletter: "Before the start of the October 2009 term, the ABA's PREVIEW of United States Supreme Court Cases brought together a unique panel of Supreme Court experts at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. to discuss the upcoming Supreme Court term, some interesting cases, and the likely impact of Justice Sotomayor's presence on the bench. Download the program today."

Source: ABA Division of Public Education. "Law Matters."  October 2009. Subscribe <http://www.abanet.org/publiced/lawmatters/subscribe.html>.

Posted by Chuck Kallendorf: "Courts of "original jurisdiction" are those having priority over other tribunals to decide a case; Black's Law Dictionary defines an "intervenor" as "one voluntarily entering a pending lawsuit because of a personal stake in the outcome." That clear cut it's presumably not always...

A Law.com article this morning reviewed one such matter in one of last Tuesday's Supreme Court's hearings, but "during oral arguments in a water dispute between two states that came to the Court under its "original jurisdiction" over conflicts between states, discussion of the issues led the justices into some broader questions about the nature of original jurisdiction cases and the role of special masters appointed by the Court to assist in their adjudication."

The case, South Carolina v. North Carolina, involves a dispute over the apportionment of water from the Catawba River, which flows between the two states, the article says, but the issue now before the justices is whether three non-state parties - the City of Charlotte, an interstate water supply organization, and a hydroelectric power company-- may join as interveners in the case. A special master appointed by the Court to oversee fact-finding in the case recommended that the parties be allowed to intervene. South Carolina, supported by the U.S. Solicitor General's office, is appealling that recommendation, citing the Supreme Court's standard set forth in New Jersey v. New York in 1953 that "intervention by a non-state entity is proper only when the putative intervenor demonstrates (1) a 'compelling interest in [its] own right,' (2) 'apart from [its] interest in a class with all other citizens and creatures of the state,' (3) 'which interest is not properly represented by the state.'"

ScotusBlog has more.

Special Master Kristin Linsley Myles' report
Transcript of oral arguments

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Source: Cincinnati Law Library Blog, 15 October 2009

From the blog: "If you're doing some research on the Supreme Court, make sure that this website is your first stop for sources. Containing over 200 pieces of information about the U.S. Supreme Court cases decided between 1953 and 2009, it contains a wealth of useful information!"

From CM Law Library Blog

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Source: Moritz Legal Information Blog, 18 August 2009