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October 2, 2017
First big SCOTUS order list has lots of big "cert denied" decisions in big sentencing cases
In prior posts here and here and here, I flagged a couple of commentaries that had flagged Supreme Court cert petitions to watch with the start of a new SCOTUS Term. A lot of folks have been paying particular attention to two sex offender cases, Karsjens v. Piper (concerning the constitutionality of Minnesota Sex Offender Program), and Snyder v. Does (concerning retroactive application of Michigan's sex offender registry).
This morning, the Supreme Court released this 75-page order list in which it denied cert on both of these closely-watched cases. The order list also reveals SCOTUS also denied cert in a number of other cases of likely interest to sentencing fans, such as various cases concerning the application of the Eighth Amendment limit on LWOP juve sentences set out in Graham and Miller. As detailed in this post last week, the Supreme Court already added a few criminal cases to its docket as it got back to work for the Term. But none of the new cases it has taken up are likely blockbusters or possibly as consequential as the cases it now has officially decided not to review.
For a variety of reasons, I am not too surprised by these denials of cert. Despite my own wishful thinking that the addition of Justice Gorsuch might juice the parts of the docket I find most exciting, I am largely expecting a relatively quiet Term on the sentencing front. That all said, hope springs eternal, and hope for some exciting grants might be renewed when the fine folks at SCOTUSblog figure out which cases are missing from this new order list and become hot prospects as "relisted" petitions.
October 2, 2017 at 10:16 AM | Permalink
Comments
When the Courts are asked to hear a case, they should not be able to deny a case brought before them. People are demanding answers, if courts are so backed up, why are they prosecuting trivial cases? Why not a common Law Jury? Perhaps spending more time at their job would stop the backload of cases? Tell prosecutors that they are breaking their Oath of Office to the people.
Posted by: LC in Texas | Oct 3, 2017 7:23:58 PM
Of course they did. They know these would have finally killed the illegal registration scheme for all time
Posted by: Rodsmith3510 | Oct 4, 2017 11:16:58 AM
