SUPREME COURT NOTEBOOK

Justices reject rapper C-Murder's appeal WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has passed up another chance to deal with an anomaly of constitutional law that requires federal juries to reach unanimous verdicts in criminal cases, but allows states to make different rules. The court on Tuesday rejected the appeal of the rapper known as C-Murder, who is serving a life sentence for killing a 16-year-old fan in Louisiana. A jury voted 10-2 to convict the rapper, whose real name is Corey Miller. Louisiana and Oregon are the only two states that allow for non-unanimous convictions for some crimes. The justices recently have rejected similar appeals asking them to treat state and federal trials equally. Decisions involving gun rights and other issues generally require states to extend the same constitutional rights as the federal government. Court won't hear appeal from ex-Ill. governor WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal from ex-Illinois Gov. George Ryan over his corruption conviction. The justices on Tuesday turned away Ryan's appeal without comment. The former governor wanted them to reconsider his conviction based on a 2010 decision saying honest service fraud requires bribery and kickbacks. Ryan said the jury instructions at his trial were wrong, and that it was never proven that he took bribes. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to overturn his conviction, and the high court refused to reconsider that decision. A jury convicted Ryan in 2006 of racketeering, conspiracy, tax fraud and making false statements to the FBI. Ryan was released from prison earlier this year and is serving the rest of his sentence on home confinement. Police don't have to prove dog training By Jesse J. Holland Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- Police don't have to extensively document the work of drug-sniffing dogs in the field to be able to use the results of their work in court, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday. Instead, Justice Elena Kagan wrote for a unanimous court, courts should apply the same tests to dog sniffs they do when they look at other issues of whether police have probable cause to take an action. "The question --similar to every inquiry into probable cause -- is whether all the facts surrounding a dog's alert, viewed through the lens of common sense, would make a reasonably prudent person think that a search would reveal contraband or evidence of a crime," Kagan said. "A sniff is up to snuff when it meets that test." The court's ruling overturns a decision by the Florida Supreme Court in the case of Aldo, a drug-sniffing police dog used by the Liberty County sheriff. Aldo was trained to detect methamphetamine, marijuana, cocaine, heroin and ecstasy, and alerted his officer to the scent of drugs on a truck during a 2006 traffic stop. Instead of those drugs, a search of Clayton Harris' truck resulted in 200 loose pseudoephedrine pills, 8,000 matches, a bottle of hydrochloric acid, two containers of antifreeze and a coffee filter full of iodine crystals -- all ingredients for making methamphetamine. Harris was arrested and charged with possessing pseudoephedrine for use in manufacturing methamphetamine. Two months later, Harris was stopped again. Aldo again alerted his officer to the presence of drugs, but none were found. Harris asked the courts to throw out evidence showing drugs were found in his truck, saying Aldo's alert did not give police probable cause for a search. The Florida justices agreed, saying the police officer lacked probable cause to search, arguing that the officials' contention that a drug dog has been trained and certified to detect narcotics was not enough to establish the dog's reliability in court. Instead, the Florida court said, police needed to present training and certification records, field performance records, explanation of those records, and evidence concerning the dog handler's experience and training. Kagan said that went too far. "A finding of a drug-detection dog's reliability cannot depend on the state's satisfaction of multiple, independent evidentiary requirements," she said. "No more for dogs than for human informants is such an inflexible checklist the way to prove reliability, and thus establish probable cause." Instead of depending on police performance logs -- "Errors may abound in such records," Kagan noted -- standard training and certification records from the dog's training are much more reliable, she said. "The better measure of a dog's reliability thus comes away from the field, in controlled testing environments," she said. "For that reason, evidence of a dog's satisfactory performance in a certification or training program can itself provide sufficient reason to trust his alert." Defendants can challenge that evidence, Kagan said, by asserting for example that the training was too lax or the certification methods faulty. But "if the state has produced proof from controlled settings that a dog performs reliably in detecting drugs, and the defendant has not contested that showing, then the court should find probable cause," she said. The Supreme Court has yet to decide a second question about police use of drug sniffing dogs, over whether they can bring their narcotic-detecting dogs to sniff around the outside of homes without a warrant. That decision is expected to come later this year. U.S. custody case not moot with child abroad By Jesse J. Holland Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States court system does not lose jurisdiction in international custody disputes simply because the child involved is no longer in the country, the Supreme Court said Tuesday. That unanimous ruling is the latest in the battle between a U.S. soldier, Army Sgt. 1st Class Jeffrey Lee Chafin, and his estranged Scottish wife, Lynne Hales Chafin, over their daughter. Chafin wants to appeal a federal judge's decision to let Lynne Hales Chafin take their daughter back to her native Scotland. But the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Chafin's appeal was moot because the 6-year-old girl has now been in Scotland for more than a year, and that his only remedy is in Scotland's courts. Chief Justice John Roberts said that was wrong. "Such return does not render this case moot; there is a live dispute between the parties over where their child will be raised, and there is a possibility of effectual relief for the prevailing parent," Roberts said. "The courts below therefore continue to have jurisdiction to adjudicate the merits of the parties' respective claims." The Chafins married in Scotland in 2006; their daughter was born in 2007. The family lived in Germany until Chafin was deployed in Afghanistan, and mother and daughter moved to Scotland. Chafin transferred to the state of Alabama in 2009, and was joined by his family the next year. The Chafins agreed to divorce in 2010, and Lynne Chafin was deported in February 2011. She sued to take her child with her, citing the 1980 Hague convention on international child abductions, which is designed to return children illegally taken from member countries. She said their daughter's residence was Scotland, and that her husband illegally retained the child in the United States. A federal judge agreed, and ordered the girl be taken to Scotland. The judge also refused to stay the order. The mother and child boarded a plane and left the country. Chafin appealed to the circuit court, which said the case was moot because the girl was in her official residence of Scotland. That doesn't matter, Roberts said. Chafin has a right to make a claim, and a possibility of success, which eliminates an argument of mootness. And the fact that the girl is in Scotland doesn't matter, he said. "Even if Scotland were to ignore a U.S. re-return order, or decline to assist in enforcing it, this case would not be moot," he said. "The U.S. courts continue to have personal jurisdiction over Ms. Chafin, may command her to take action even outside the United States, and may back up any such command with sanctions ... Enforcement of the order may be uncertain if Ms. Chafin chooses to defy it, but such uncertainty does not typically render cases moot." Roberts said if they allow Chafin's case to be ruled moot, judges would automatically stay rulings in Hague convention cases to preserve jurisdiction. "In such cases, in which a stay would not be granted but for the prospect of mootness, a child would lose precious months when she could have been readjusting to life in her country of habitual residence, even though the appeal has little chance of success," Roberts said. A ruling for Ms. Chafin would also send the wrong signal to international parents, Roberts said. "A mootness holding here might also encourage flight in future Hague Convention cases, as prevailing parents try to flee the jurisdiction to moot the case," the chief justice said. Justices rule against Georgia hospital merger By Mark Sherman Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has dealt a setback to a deal between two private companies that left one as the owner of the only two hospitals in a southwestern Georgia city. The justices ruled unanimously Tuesday that lower courts improperly dismissed complaints that the merger, aided by a public hospital authority, created a monopoly in hospital services in Albany, Ga. The Federal Trade Commission tried to block the deal by arguing that it violated federal antitrust law. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her opinion for the court that an exception in antitrust law for actions taken by a state or its agencies -- in this case, the hospital authority -- did not shield the transaction from federal antitrust concerns. Lower federal courts allowed Albany's Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital to buy Palmyra Medical Center from Hospital Corporation of America for $195 million over the FTC's objection. Both hospitals now are nominally owned by the Hospital Authority of Albany-Dougherty County, but run by the Phoebe Putney Health System under long-term leases. The money for the Palmyra purchase came from the health system, not the authority. The court has long accepted that the some business deals that lead to monopolies that otherwise would raise antitrust concerns are allowable if they are done by states. But in such cases, the states have to explain clearly why competition is not in the public interest and they have to ensure a level of control and oversight of the monopolies. "We hold that Georgia has not clearly articulated and affirmatively expressed a policy to allow hospital authorities to make acquisitions that substantially lessen competition," Sotomayor said. The hospital authority tried to persuade the justices that the merger was the cheapest way to find additional bed space and still serve the poor. But not a single justice accepted that argument in the end. The case is Federal Trade Commission v. Phoebe Putney Health System, 11-1160. Detention powers in searches limited By Mark Sherman Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has limited the power of police to detain people who are not at home when their residence is to be searched. By a 6-3 vote Tuesday, the justices sided with a Long Island, N.Y., man who was picked up about three-quarters of a mile away from his apartment as police searched it for a gun. Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his opinion for the court's majority that the authority of police to detain people found at home during a search authorized by a warrant is limited to the immediate vicinity of the premises. He said that concern for officer safety diminishes the farther away from the home the detention occurs. In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer said he would have upheld lower court rulings in favor of the police "in light of the risks of flight, of evidence destruction, and of human injury present in this and similar cases." Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined Breyer's dissent. The Fourth Amendment usually requires police to strongly suspect an individual has committed a crime before he can be detained. But the court in 1981 ruled in Michigan v. Summers that police could detain people without suspicion during a search to keep them from doing harm to officers, keep them from fleeing and allowing them to, for example, open a door instead of having the police bash it in. In this case, Chunon Bailey, also known by the alias of Polo, left his basement apartment in Wyandanch, N.Y., shortly before police began their search. Unaware of the impending search, Bailey and another man got into Bailey's black Lexus and drove away, apparently to get the friend home by 10 p.m. to comply with a condition of his parole. Officers followed in an unmarked car and stopped the Lexus a few minutes later. Bailey and his friend were handcuffed and taken back to the apartment where, by then, police had found a gun and drugs. Bailey tried and failed to get courts to throw out anything he said to police when he was stopped and also a key to the apartment police found when they patted him down. He was found guilty of cocaine possession and other crimes and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Kennedy said none of the concerns present in the court's 1981 case justified Bailey's detention. "The categorical authority to detain incident to the execution of a search warrant must be limited to the immediate vicinity of the premises to be searched," he said. To do otherwise gives the police too much discretion, Kennedy said. But the ruling may not let Bailey off the hook entirely. Kennedy said the government still can argue that another rationale made the decision to stop and detain Bailey legal. The justices ordered the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York to take a new look at Bailey's case. The case is Bailey v. U.S., 11-770. Published: Thu, Feb 21, 2013