Justices decline to extend ruling on repeat offenders
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court on Monday declined to give some inmates convicted of repeated violent crimes a chance to reduce their prison terms.
The justices unanimously rejected a challenge to guidelines that boosted the sentence of a Florida man convicted of unlawful possession of a sawed-off shotgun.
Travis Beckles received a 30-year sentence as a career offender because he had two prior felony drug convictions. Beckles said language in the sentencing guidelines defining what crimes make a defendant eligible for a longer prison term is so vague that it's unconstitutional. He was relying on a high court ruling last year that struck down similar language in the Armed Career Criminal Act.
Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas declined to apply that ruling to language in the sentencing guidelines. He said the sentencing guidelines can't be challenged for being too vague since they only offer a guide to how courts can impose sentences within an acceptable range.
A ruling in favor of Beckles would have allowed up to 6,000 federal inmates sentenced under the guidelines to seek a reduction, according to the National Association of Federal Defenders, a defense attorney group.
Only seven justices heard the case after Justice Elena Kagan recused herself from taking part. A federal appeals court had also ruled against Beckles' challenge.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed with the outcome, but wrote separately to say that the majority went too far in saying the sentencing guidelines can never be challenged for being too vague. Justice Anthony Kennedy also wrote separately to say that some sentencing rules might be challenged under the Constitution for being too arbitrary.
Jury secrecy no bar to looking into race bias
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - A juror's use of racial or ethnic slurs during deliberations over a defendant's guilt can be a reason for breaching the centuries-old legal principle of secrecy in the jury room, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.
The justices ruled 5-3 in a case from Colorado that lower courts can take the unusual step of examining jury deliberations when there are indications that racial bias deprived a defendant of his right to a fair trial.
The decision followed another ruling last month in which the court took a hard line against racial bias in the criminal justice system. In that case, the justices ruled in favor of an African-American prison inmate in Texas whose death sentence may have been tainted by troubling references to race in court testimony.
In Monday's case, defendant Miguel Angel Pena Rodriguez appealed to the Supreme Court after two jurors reported that a third juror tied Pena Rodriguez's guilt to his Hispanic heritage.
The juror's statements reportedly saying Pena Rodriguez was guilty because he is "Mexican, and Mexican men take whatever they want" only came to light after he was convicted of inappropriately touching teenage girls.
Colorado courts ruled against Pena Rodriguez because of a legal rule that protects jury deliberations.
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority "that blatant racial prejudice is antithetical to the functioning of the jury system and must be confronted in egregious cases like this one despite the general bar of the no-impeachment rule." The court's four liberal justices joined with Kennedy to form a majority.
The federal government and all 50 states have a rule that protects jury deliberations to discourage outside pressure and promote a jury's independence, though several allow exceptions in circumstances similar to the case decided Monday, Kennedy said.
But the court stopped short of ordering a new trial or even laying out procedures for lower courts to follow. Instead, Kennedy said, trial courts could "consider the evidence of the juror's statement and any resulting denial of the jury trial guarantees.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.
"Today, with the admirable intention of providing justice for one criminal defendant, the court not only pries open the door; it rules that respecting the privacy of the jury room, as our legal system has done for centuries, violates the Constitution," Alito wrote.
The Supreme Court had resisted the call in earlier cases to examine what was said in the jury room. But several justices indicated during argument in the case in October that the allegations raised by Pena Rodriguez made for an extraordinary case.
No other juror was alleged to have said anything improper and all 12 jurors, including the two who reported the inappropriate comments, voted to convict him.
Lawyers for Colorado and the Obama administration, which urged the court to leave jury secrecy undisturbed, acknowledged that statements attributed to the juror identified only as H.C. were indefensible. But they said there are better ways to address racial bias on juries, including closer screening of potential jurors.
The case is Pena Rodriguez v. Colorado, 15-606.
Court won't say if trans teen can pick bathroom
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is leaving the issue of transgender rights in schools to lower courts for now after backing out of a high-profile case Monday of a Virginia high school student who sued to be able to use the boys' bathroom.
The court's order in the case of teenager Gavin Grimm means that attention now will turn to lower courts around the country that are grappling with rights of transgender students to use school bathrooms that correspond to their chosen gender, not the one assigned at birth.
The appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, and other appellate panels handling similar cases around the country will have the first chance to decide whether federal anti-discrimination law or the Constitution protects transgender students' rights.
Monday's action by a court that has been short-handed for more than a year comes after the Trump administration pulled back federal guidance advising schools to let students use the bathroom of their chosen gender, not the one assigned at birth.
The justices rejected a call from both sides to decide the issue in a case that was dramatically altered by the election of President Donald Trump.
Grimm's case had been scheduled for argument in late March. Instead, a lower court in Virginia will be tasked with evaluating the federal law known as Title IX and the extent to which it applies to transgender students. Lawsuits involving transgender students are making their way through the courts in at least five other states: Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
For Grimm, the order means that he probably will graduate with the issue unresolved. Now, his wish to use the boys' bathroom is blocked by a policy of the Gloucester County school board. Although he won a court order allowing him to use the boys' bathroom at Gloucester High School, the Supreme Court put it on hold last August, before the school year began.
Talking to reporters by telephone Monday, Grimm said the situation has added stress to the usual senior year worries of applying to college because the "school board has sent this direct message ... that there is something about you that deserves to be segregated from the rest of the student body."
The court case has drawn attention from all over the world. Apple, IBM and Microsoft were among the 53 companies that signed onto a brief filed last week urging the court to rule in his favor.
In Gloucester, a small, conservative Tidewater town, the issue has divided residents and fellow students.
Fellow senior Shaelyn McNeil said Grimm should be free to make changes, but she thinks his lawsuit has "gone a little too far."
Shelbi Stackler, a graduate of Gloucester High School, said Grimm should be allowed to use the boys' bathroom because "he doesn't want to feel different. He just wants to feel like a normal boy."
Joshua Block, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represents Grimm, said he remains persuaded that courts ultimately will side with transgender students.
But, Block said, "This is disappointing for trans kids across the country and for Gavin, who are now going to be held in limbo for another year or two. But Title IX means the same thing today as it meant yesterday. Lower courts already have held that it protects trans kids."
In a statement relayed by school board lawyer Kyle Duncan, the board said it "looks forward to explaining why its commonsense restroom and locker room policy is legal under the Constitution and federal law."
The high court action follows the administration's recent decision to withdraw a directive issued during Barack Obama's presidency that said which bathroom to use should be based on students' gender identity.
The administration action triggered legal wrangling that ended with Monday's order. In essence, the federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, had relied on the Obama administration's interpretation of Title IX to side with Grimm. The appeals court accepted the administration's reading of the law without deciding for itself what the law and a related regulation on same-sex bathrooms and locker rooms mean.
No appeals court has yet undertaken that more independent analysis, and the Supreme Court typically is reluctant to do so without at least one appellate opinion to review, and usually more than one.
Another possible explanation for Monday's order is that the court might want more of a societal consensus to develop before it issues a ruling in favor of transgender rights, said John Neiman, an Alabama lawyer who served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy.
"What happened today feels a lot like 2013, when the court used a procedural ruling to temporarily duck the same-sex marriage issue," Neiman said.
By 2015, same-sex marriage was back before the court and Kennedy's opinion gave same-sex couples the right to marry nationwide.
The court's reluctance to take on transgender rights now may have been underscored by the high court vacancy caused by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia nearly 13 months ago and the refusal of Senate Republicans to consider Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to fill the seat. Eleven days after taking office, Trump nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch for the court.
Senate Republicans, who hold a slim majority, have scheduled hearings on Gorsuch's nominations to begin on March 20 and hope to vote to confirm him by the second week in April.
The justices did not comment on the case beyond their one-sentence order returning it to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
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Associated Press writers Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia, and Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Virginia, contributed to this report.
Published: Wed, Mar 08, 2017
