In the fall of 2002, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo terrorized the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Dubbed the “D.C. snipers,” Muhammad and Malvo randomly shot and killed 12 people and badly injured six more. Muhammad was sentenced to death and executed in 2009, while Malvo – who was only 17 at the time… Read More

Last year Louisiana repealed a state law that allowed a criminal defendant (except in capital cases) to be convicted without a unanimous verdict from the jury. But the change only applied to crimes committed on or after January 1, 2019. So this afternoon the Supreme Court heard oral argument in a challenge to the constitutionality… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court issued more orders from last week’s private conference – the first regularly scheduled conference since the end of June. As expected, the justices did not add any more cases to their merits docket for the term, but they did deny review in over 1,000 cases. One of the most closely… Read More

The Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution of Robert Sparks, who has been sentenced to die by lethal injection in Texas for the brutal triple murder of his wife and two stepsons. There were no recorded dissents from tonight’s order, which denied both Sparks’ petition for review of the lower court’s ruling against… Read More

Three days after finishing radiation treatment for pancreatic cancer, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke in Buffalo, NY, yesterday. The 86-year-old justice received an honorary doctorate from the State University of New York, becoming the first Supreme Court justice to do so. The university reported that the justice also participated in a question-and-answer session with the… Read More

Speaking at the judicial conference of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in June, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told her audience that Justice Anthony Kennedy’s 2018 retirement was “the event of greatest consequence for the current Term, and perhaps for many Terms ahead.” Less than three weeks later, Ginsburg’s assessment proved accurate… Read More

Earlier this month, New York City sent a letter to Scott Harris, the clerk of the Supreme Court, to inform the justices that a challenge to the city’s ban on transporting guns outside the city limits is moot – that is, no longer a live controversy. The Supreme Court did not accept the letter, perhaps… Read More

The battle over the Trump administration’s efforts to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico continued to unfold today. Last week the federal government asked the Supreme Court to put on hold a district court’s order that prohibited the government from using $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds for construction of the wall. This… Read More

The Supreme Court released the calendar for its November sitting today. On November 12, the justices will hear oral argument in what promises to be one of the biggest disputes of the term: the challenge to the Trump administration’s decision to terminate the program known as “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals,” or “DACA,” which allowed… Read More