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10-03-2004, 08:46 AM
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http://www.detnews.com/2004/nation/0410/03/a04-291793.htm
Sunday, October 3, 2004
High court has a full calendar
Justices to weigh cases involving sentencing guidelines, civil rights, search and seizure.
By Mary Deibel / Scripps Howard News Service
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WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court term that opens Monday takes up where the justices left off last term with a bombshell ruling on sentencing criminals.
A 5-4 decision in Blakely v. Washington tossed out Washington's sentencing law, which let judges increase jail time beyond what a jury decides. Since that provision was a key part of federal sentencing guidelines, courts nationwide have struggled to decide if the guidelines are still valid.
Responding to urgent requests from the Bush administration and lower courts, the Supreme Court scheduled arguments Monday to weigh whether the federal sentencing guidelines used to sentence drug dealers Duncan Fanfan and Freddie Booker violated their Sixth Amendment jury-trial rights.
Acting Bush Solicitor General Paul Clement notes that 1,200 federal defendants are sentenced each week, or more than 35,000 on average a year. Add to that thousands upon thousands of people indicted, tried and sentenced by the 50 states and their courts, and it's easy to see why the issue has exploded across the legal landscape.
Other cases on this term's docket range from life-and-death to everyday issues:
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: The justices took the case of Missouri death-row inmate Christopher Simmons to decide if a national consensus has emerged to end the execution of people who were 16 or 17 at the time of the crime.
The court halted executions of offenders younger than 16 in 1988 but upheld the death penalty for older teens the next year on grounds no consensus existed.
CIVIL RIGHTS: An Alabama high-school coach who lost his job for complaining about poor treatment of the girls' basketball team asks the justices to decide if the law that bans sex bias in education allows suits for retaliation. The suit by Roderick Jackson against Birmingham schools is a landmark test of Title IX of the Education Act Amendments of 1972, the law that bans gender bias in schools that get federal funds.
SEARCH-AND-SEIZURE: Illinois defends the use of drug-sniffing dogs at routine traffic stops as a "Fourth Amendment non-event," likening the practice to a 1983 Supreme Court case that OK'd use of dogs at airports as a less intrusive search technique.
PROPERTY RIGHTS: Connecticut homeowners want the justices to hold that a New London municipal plan to raze their middle-class homes for a luxury riverfront complex falls outside the Fifth Amendment rules that allow "taking" private property for public use.
MEDICAL MARIJUANA: Can federal authorities prosecute people who grow marijuana at home if it never crosses state lines and is grown in compliance with state referendums that authorize medical marijuana's use? Here the administration challenges a California federal appeals court ruling that drug agents overstepped their authority when they destroyed homegrown marijuana plants that two patients grew under doctor's orders and under a California initiative that allows marijuana for "personal medical purposes."
http://www.detnews.com/2004/nation/0410/03/a04-291793.htm
Sunday, October 3, 2004
High court has a full calendar
Justices to weigh cases involving sentencing guidelines, civil rights, search and seizure.
By Mary Deibel / Scripps Howard News Service
Comment on this story
Send this story to a friend
Get Home Delivery
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court term that opens Monday takes up where the justices left off last term with a bombshell ruling on sentencing criminals.
A 5-4 decision in Blakely v. Washington tossed out Washington's sentencing law, which let judges increase jail time beyond what a jury decides. Since that provision was a key part of federal sentencing guidelines, courts nationwide have struggled to decide if the guidelines are still valid.
Responding to urgent requests from the Bush administration and lower courts, the Supreme Court scheduled arguments Monday to weigh whether the federal sentencing guidelines used to sentence drug dealers Duncan Fanfan and Freddie Booker violated their Sixth Amendment jury-trial rights.
Acting Bush Solicitor General Paul Clement notes that 1,200 federal defendants are sentenced each week, or more than 35,000 on average a year. Add to that thousands upon thousands of people indicted, tried and sentenced by the 50 states and their courts, and it's easy to see why the issue has exploded across the legal landscape.
Other cases on this term's docket range from life-and-death to everyday issues:
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: The justices took the case of Missouri death-row inmate Christopher Simmons to decide if a national consensus has emerged to end the execution of people who were 16 or 17 at the time of the crime.
The court halted executions of offenders younger than 16 in 1988 but upheld the death penalty for older teens the next year on grounds no consensus existed.
CIVIL RIGHTS: An Alabama high-school coach who lost his job for complaining about poor treatment of the girls' basketball team asks the justices to decide if the law that bans sex bias in education allows suits for retaliation. The suit by Roderick Jackson against Birmingham schools is a landmark test of Title IX of the Education Act Amendments of 1972, the law that bans gender bias in schools that get federal funds.
SEARCH-AND-SEIZURE: Illinois defends the use of drug-sniffing dogs at routine traffic stops as a "Fourth Amendment non-event," likening the practice to a 1983 Supreme Court case that OK'd use of dogs at airports as a less intrusive search technique.
PROPERTY RIGHTS: Connecticut homeowners want the justices to hold that a New London municipal plan to raze their middle-class homes for a luxury riverfront complex falls outside the Fifth Amendment rules that allow "taking" private property for public use.
MEDICAL MARIJUANA: Can federal authorities prosecute people who grow marijuana at home if it never crosses state lines and is grown in compliance with state referendums that authorize medical marijuana's use? Here the administration challenges a California federal appeals court ruling that drug agents overstepped their authority when they destroyed homegrown marijuana plants that two patients grew under doctor's orders and under a California initiative that allows marijuana for "personal medical purposes."