U.S. Supreme Court Hears Argument: Week of March 24, 2008
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear argument in seven cases this week. More information on the Term, including briefings, analysis, and videos, may be found here.
Monday, March 24
- Burgess v. U.S. (06-11429) (whether an offense classified as a misdemeanor but punishable by more than a year in prison qualifies as a "felony drug offense" and thus triggers a mandatory minimum sentence)
- U.S. v. Clintwood Elkhorn Mining Company (07-308) (whether a coal company that did not meet the Tucker Act statute of limitations may seek a tax refund (with interest) directly under the Export Clause of the Constitution)
- Riley v. Kennedy (07-77) (whether the appointment of a county official instead of holding a special election in Alabama violated the pre-clearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act)
Tuesday, March 25
- Munaf v. Geren/ Green v. Omar (06-1666) (whether federal courts have jurisdiction to consider a habeas petition of a U.S. citizen detained by U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq pending a transfer to Iraqi authorities following a conviction in an Iraqi criminal court)
- U.S. v. Ressam (07-455) (whether 18 U.S.C. 1844(h)(2), which mandates 10 years in prison for carrying an explosive during the commission of a felony, requires the explosives to be carried “in relation to” the underlying felony)
Wednesday, March 26
- Indiana v. Edwards (07-208) (whether the Sixth Amendment grants a defendant found competent to stand trial the right to represent himself in a criminal proceeding)
- Florida Dept. of Revenue v. Piccadilly Cafeterias (07-312) (whether a state may tax a court-ordered transfer of property from a chapter 11 bankruptcy estate to a third-party purchaser of the bankrupt party’s assets)
Questions Presented are below the fold.
1. Whether the term “felony drug offense” as used in federal statute requiring imposition of enhanced mandatory minimum 20 years’ imprisonment when drug offender has “prior conviction for a felony drug offense” must be read in pari materia with federal statutes defining both “felony” and “felony drug offense”, so as to require imposition of minimum 20-year sentence only if prior drug conviction is both punishable by more than one year in prison and characterized as a felony by controlling law.
2. When the court finds that a criminal statute is ambiguous, must it then turn to rule of lenity to resolve ambiguity?
U.S. v. Clintwood Elkhorn Mining
Whether a taxpayer who would have been entitled to file a tax refund action in federal court to seek a refund of taxes (and interest thereon), but who failed to satisfy a statutory prerequisite to such an action (namely, the filing of a timely administrative refund claim) and is therefore barred from bringing such an action, may obtain a refund, and interest thereon, through an action directly under the Constitution pursuant to the Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C. 1491(a).
This Section 5 litigation involves two decisions of the Supreme Court of Alabama, Stokes v. Noonan, 534 So. 2d 237 (Ala. 1988), and Riley v. Kennedy, 928 So. 2d 1013 (Ala. 2005). Those decisions concern the manner of filling vacancies on the Mobile County Commission and are based on valid, race-neutral, generally applicable principles of law. The three-judge district court held that both decisions required preclearance to be enforceable. The State submitted the decisions for preclearance, and the Attorney General of the United States interposed an objection. The district court then entered a remedy order vacating a gubernatorial appointment that had relied on these State court decisions to fill a vacancy that had arisen. This appeal presents the following questions:
1. Whether the decision of a covered jurisdiction’s highest court that a precleared State law is unconstitutional and, thereby, invalid as a matter of State law is a change that affects voting that must be precleared before it can be enforced.
2. Whether the preclearance of a trial court’s ruling that affects voting while that ruling is on appeal and subject to possible reversal establishes a baseline such that the reversal of that decision is a change that must be precleared before it may be enforced.
Munaf v. Geren (argued with Green v. Omar)
1. When an American citizen is detained under the exclusive control of American military authorities abroad, is the jurisdiction of a federal court to entertain his petition for a writ of habeas corpus defeated by the fact that those American military authorities purport to act as a part of a multi-national force and that they propose — with no valid legal authority — to deliver the citizen to a foreign nation for execution of a death sentence imposed by a court of that nation?
2. Does the decision of the Court of Appeals, holding that Hirota v. MacArthur deprives the federal courts of jurisdiction under these circumstances, extend the 1948 per curiam opinion in Hirota into conflict with this Court’s post-1948 jurisprudence culminating in Rasul v. Bush and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, and should that conflict be resolved either by restricting Hirota to its proper sphere or by overruling it?
3. Did the Court of Appeals err in holding that the jurisdiction of the federal courts over a habeas corpus petition filed by an American citizen detained under the exclusive control of American military authorities abroad turns on whether those authorities propose to deliver him to a foreign nation for prosecution in its courts (in which case the Court of Appeals has held that habeas jurisdiction exists) or for execution of sentence after conviction by the foreign court (in which case the Court of Appeals here holds that jurisdiction ceases to exist)? If this distinction is valid, can the military authorities defeat federal habeas corpus jurisdiction ex post by doing what they did in this case — arranging the conviction and sentencing of their detainee by a foreign court after his habeas petition has been filed?
Green v. Omar (argued with Munaf v. Geren)
Respondent, a dual American-Jordanian citizen, voluntarily traveled to Iraq, allegedly committed serious crimes there, was captured in an active combat zone by members of an international military force (the Multinational Force-Iraq), and is being held under international authority by United States military personnel acting as part of that international military coalition and at the request of the Iraqi government. The questions presented are as follows:
1. Whether the United States courts have jurisdiction to entertain a habeas corpus petition filed on behalf of an individual such as respondent challenging his detention by the multinational force.
2. Whether, if such jurisdiction exists, the district court had the power to enjoin the multinational force from releasing respondent to Iraqi custody or allowing respondent to be tried before the Iraqi courts.
Section 844(h)(2) of Title 18, United States Code, prescribes a mandatory ten-year term of imprisonment for any person who “carries an explosive during the commission of any felony which may be prosecuted in a court of the United States.” The question presented is whether Section 844(h)(2) requires that the explosives be carried “in relation to” the underlying felony.
The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted limited to the following question: "May states adopt a higher standard for measuring competency to represent oneself at trial than for measuring competency to stand trial?"
Florida Department of Revenue v. Piccadilly Cafeterias
Whether section 1146(a) of the Bankruptcy Code, which exempts from stamp or similar taxes any asset transfer “under a plan confirmed under section 1129 of the Code,” applies to transfers of assets occurring prior to the actual confirmation of such a plan?