Two interesting intricate criminal justice rulings from SCOTUS (including a first-ever casebook cite in Betterman!)

The Supreme Court release three opinions this morning, two of which are criminal justice cases. Here are the most essential basics with links via How Appealing:

1. Justice Elena Kagan delivered the opinion of the Court in Luna Torres v. Lynch, No. 14-1096. Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen G. Breyer joined. You can access the oral argument via this link.

2. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court in Betterman v. Montana, No. 14-1457. Justice Thomas issued a concurring opinion, in which Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. joined. And Justice Sotomayor also issued a concurring opinion. You can access the oral argument via this link.

Statutory interpretation fans will be most interested in the ruling, but sentencing fans will be focused on the Betterman ruling. It gets started this way:

The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury . . . .” Does the Sixth Amendment’s speedy trial guarantee apply to the sentencing phase of a criminal prosecution?  That is the sole question this case presents.  We hold that the guarantee protects the accused from arrest or indictment through trial, but does not apply once a defendant has been found guilty at trial or has pleaded guilty to criminal charges.  For inordinate delay in sentencing, although the Speedy Trial Clause does not govern, a defendant may have other recourse, including, in appropriate circumstances, tailored relief under the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.  Petitioner Brandon Betterman, however, advanced in this Court only a Sixth Amendment speedy trial claim.  He did not preserve a due process challenge.  See Tr. of Oral Arg. 19.  We, therefore, confine this opinion to his Sixth Amendment challenge.

Because I would like to see the Due Process Clause play bigger role in regulating sentencing matters, I am inclined to like the Betterman ruling. And, as the title of this post highlights, I definitely linked this passage from the majority opinion for an obvious personal reason:

[A] central feature of contemporary sentencing in both federal and state courts is preparation by the probation office, and review by the parties and the court, of a presentence investigation report. See 18 U. S. C. §3552; Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 32(c)–(g); 6 W. LaFave, J. Israel, N. King, & O. Kerr, Criminal Procedure §26.5(b), pp. 1048–1049 (4th ed. 2015) (noting reliance on presentence reports in federal and state courts). This aspect of the system requires some amount of wholly reasonable presentencing delay.8 Indeed, many — if not most— disputes are resolved, not at the hearing itself, but rather through the presentence-report process.  See N. Demleitner, D. Berman, M. Miller, & R. Wright, Sentencing Law and Policy 443 (3d ed. 2013) (“Criminal justice is far more commonly negotiated than adjudicated; defendants and their attorneys often need to be more concerned about the charging and plea bargaining practices of prosecutors and the presentence investigations of probation offices than . . . about the sentencing procedures of judges or juries.”); cf. Bierschbach & Bibas, Notice-and-Comment Sentencing, 97 Minn. L. Rev. 1, 15 (2012) (“[T]oday’s sentencing hearings . . . rubber-stamp plea-bargained sentences.”).