Supreme Court grants cert on a quasi-criminal case (while two justices dissent from denial of cert in Ohio capital case reversal)

The Supreme Court started what could be a historic week with this (relatively uneventful) order list.   The Court granted cert in two cases, one of which is somewhat like a criminal case.  Specifically, the issue in Bittner v. US, No. 21-1195, is described by SCOTUSblog this way:  "Whether a 'violation' under the Bank Secrecy Act is the failure to file an annual Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (no matter the number of foreign accounts), or whether there is a separate violation for each individual account that was not properly reported."

More likely of interest to criminal justice and sentencing fans is the denial of cert in Shoop v. Cassano, No. 21-679, a capital case from the Buckeye State.  Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Alito, penned a 12-page dissent from the denial of cert that starts and ends this way:

In 1997, respondent August Cassano was serving a life sentence in Ohio for aggravated murder.  The prison assigned Cassano a new cellmate, Walter Hardy . A few days later, Cassano murdered Hardy by stabbing him 75 times with a prison shank.  An Ohio jury convicted Cassano of capital murder, and the trial court sentenced him to death.  Yet, more than 20 years later, the Sixth Circuit granted Cassano habeas relief because it thought that the state trial court had ignored Cassano when he purportedly invoked his right to represent himself at trial.  In doing so, the Sixth Circuit failed to treat the state-court adjudication of Cassano’s self-representation claim with the deference demanded by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA).

To correct this manifest error, I would grant Ohio’s petition and summarily reverse the Sixth Circuit.  Therefore, I respectfully dissent from denial of certiorari....

The Court of Appeals should have faithfully applied AEDPA deference and denied the writ.  Its failure to do so “illustrate[d] a lack of deference to the state court’s determination and an improper intervention in state criminal processes, contrary to the purpose and mandate of AEDPA and to the now well-settled meaning of and function of habeas corpus in the federal system.” Harrington, 562 U.S., at 104.  Because I would grant the State of Ohio’s petition and summarily reverse, I respectfully dissent from denial of certiorari.