Previewing another dynamic SCOTUS criminal justice docket

Though we are still nearly a month away from the first Monday in October, it is not too early to start gearing up for what may be another dynamic and interesting Supreme Court Term for criminal justice fans.  Wonderfully, Rory Little has already put together this lengthy preview post at SCOTUSblog under the heading "Overview of the court’s criminal docket for OT 19 — sizeable and significant."  I highly recommend Rory's post in full, and I can excerpt here his intro and conclusion along with a few sentencing-related highlights (with links from the original):

The Supreme Court has already granted review in 50 cases for the term that opens on Monday, October 7.  More will be granted when the court returns for its “long conference” (following the summer recess) on October 1.  By my broad definition (which includes immigration and civil-related-to-criminal cases), 20 of the 50 cases already granted (40%) involve criminal-law or related issues. After consolidations, this represents 16 hours of argument — and 10 of those hours will occur in the first two months.  From this end of the telescope, the cases look important, and a few will certainly have broad impact.

Monday, October 7, will open with two very significant criminal-case arguments, one before and one after lunch (with a patent case sandwiched in the middle).

First, the justices will consider whether a state may (as Kansas has) constitutionally eliminate any defense of insanity to criminal charges.  This presents both due process and Eighth Amendment questions, and involves intricate mental gymnastics regarding the difference(s) between insanity and a permissible defense of lacking criminal mens rea....  After lunch, the court will address the likely far easier question whether the “unanimous verdict” requirement for criminal jury trials under the Sixth Amendment necessarily applies to all the states under the 14th Amendment’s incorporation doctrine....

On October 16, in Mathena v. Malvo, the court will consider the life-without-parole (LWOP) sentence imposed on the juvenile “D.C. sniper,” Lee Malvo, who with an adult partner (since executed) shot and killed 10 people in the Washington, D.C., area in 2002.  The constitutionality of LWOP sentences for juveniles under the Eighth Amendment has bedeviled the court twice previously: Such sentences have been declared unconstitutional when mandatory, but not when discretionary.  This case will examine what exactly that means.  The year-old retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who authored the most recent decision on the issue, makes the outcome difficult to predict....

[A]t least one death-penalty case is almost always on the court’s annual docket.  OT 19 is no exception. In McKinney v. Arizona the justices will address questions revolving around the use and evaluation of mitigating evidence in capital cases....

In Shular v. United States, the justices will once again confront the much-critiqued “categorical approach” to evaluating which state offenses count as predicates for enhanced federal sentencing.

Somewhat refreshingly, the court granted review on a typewritten pro se prisoner petition for certiorari in Banister v. Davis, a habeas case.  Once the court requested a response from Texas, Banister enlisted a former assistant solicitor general and clerk to Justice Sonia Sotomayor to represent him, and the case, although dry, will be significant to the habeas bar....

The Supreme Court’s docket is a bit of an optical illusion: it always looks very different at the start from the way it is perceived by the following July.  Big cases argued in October are decided by early spring and by then are overshadowed by new grants of review, which we now perceive, “if foreseen at all, … dimly.” So stay tuned.  The sense of imminence and uncertainty is one reason the court and its machinations provide such an irresistible attraction!