On Point: A. Cert Grants

Questions Presented:

1. Are the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments violated where the presiding Chief Justice of a State Supreme Court declines to recuse himself in a capital case where he had personally approved the decision to pursue capital punishment against Petitioner in his prior capacity as elected District Attorney and continued to head the District Attorney’s Office that defended the death verdict on appeal; where, in his State Supreme Court election campaign, the Chief Justice expressed strong support for capital punishment, with reference to the number of defendants he had “sent” to death row, including Petitioner; and where he then, as Chief Justice, reviewed a ruling by the state postconviction court that his office committed prosecutorial misconduct under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), when it prosecuted and sought death against Petitioner?

2. Are the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments violated by the participation of a potentially biased jurist on a multimember tribunal deciding a capital case, regardless of whether his vote is ultimately decisive?

Question Presented:

Should evidence seized incident to a lawful arrest on an outstanding warrant be suppressed because the warrant was discovered during an investigatory stop later found to be unlawful?

Questions presented:

1.  Whether the law-of-the-case doctrine requires the sufficiency of the evidence in a criminal case to be measured against the elements described in the jury instructions where those instructions, without objection, require the government to prove additional or more stringent elements than do the statute and indictment.

2.  Whether a statute-of-limitations defense not raised at or before trial is reviewable on appeal.

Question presented:

Whether a state offense constitutes an aggravated felony under 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43), on the ground that the state offense is “described in” a specified federal statute, where the federal statute includes an interstate commerce element that the state offense lacks.

Question presented:

When a prisoner files more than one case or appeal in the federal courts in forma pauperis, does 28 U.S.C. § 1915(b)(2) cap the monthly exaction of filing fees at 20% of the prisoner’s monthly income regardless of the number of cases or appeals for which he owes filing fees?

Question presented:

Whether the pretrial restraint of a criminal defendant’s legitimate, untainted assets (those not traceable to a criminal offense) needed to retain counsel of choice violates the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.

Question presented:

Did the Georgia courts err in failing to recognize race discrimination under Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), in the extraordinary circumstances of this death penalty case?

Question presented:

Whether the mandatory minimum sentence prescribed in 18 U.S.C. § 2252(b)(2)—which requires a prison term of at least ten years if a defendant convicted of possessing child pornography “has a prior conviction … under the laws of any State relating to aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, or abusive sexual conduct involving a minor or ward”—is triggered by a prior conviction under a state law relating to “aggravated sexual abuse” or “sexual abuse,” even though the conviction did not “involv[e] a minor or ward.”

Questions presented:

Whether the Eighth Amendment requires that a capital-sentencing jury be affirmatively instructed that mitigating circumstances “need not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt,” as the Kansas Supreme Court held here, or instead whether the Eighth Amendment is satisfied by instructions that, in context, make clear that each juror must individually assess and weigh any mitigating circumstances

Whether the trial court’s decision not to sever the sentencing phase of the co-defendant brothers’ trial here—a decision that comports with the traditional approach preferring joinder in circumstances like this—violated an Eighth Amendment right to an “individualized sentencing” determination and was not harmless in any event.

Questions Presented:

1) Did the rule announced in Miller v. Alabama, 567 U. S. ____, 132 S.Ct. 2455 (2012), adopt a new substantive rule that applies retroactively on collateral review to people sentenced as juveniles to life in prison without parole?

2) Does the Supreme Court have jurisdiction to decide whether the Supreme Court of Louisiana correctly refused to give retroactive effect to Miller?