Supreme Court Weighs In On Jury Unanimity & Rules For Toxic Waste Cleanup | Will Court Transparency Measures Stick Post-Pandemic?
April 20, 2020
ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL
|Today the Supreme Court ruled that unanimous jury verdicts are required in state criminal trials for serious offenses. Both Louisiana and Oregon allow defendants to be convicted based on non-unanimous verdicts. JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH wrote, “Wherever we might look to determine what the term ‘trial by an impartial jury trial’ meant at the time of the Sixth Amendment’s adoption—whether it’s the common law, state practices in the founding era, or opinions and treatises written soon afterward—the answer is unmistakable. A jury must reach a unanimous verdict in order to convict.” JUSTICES GINSBURG, BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, THOMAS, and KAVANAUGH all agreed with Gorsuch on the outcome of the case, though some of their reasoning differed.
CLEAN UP, CLEAN UP, EVERYBODY EVERYWHERE
|SCOTUS today also said that under the law governing Superfund toxic waste, sites landowners need EPA approval before cleaning up sites beyond what regulators have already approved. Justices ruled 7-2 with CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS writing for the majority and JUSTICES GORSUCH and THOMAS dissenting.
THE SEARCHERS
|The Supreme Court today said it will consider whether to limit the type of conduct that can be prosecuted under a federal computer fraud law, agreeing to hear a case concerning a former Georgia police officer who was charged with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act after he looked up a strip club dancer’s license plate number in exchange for $6,000.
JUST CAN'T DENY
|Richard Wolf with USA Today reports that SCOTUS is allowing the contributions of Dreamers in the battle against the novel coronavirus to become part of the Supreme Court record “in time for the justices’ upcoming decision on their fate.” Wolf notes, “The high court agreed Monday to consider a new filing from a legal services organization at Yale Law School, as well as the National Immigration Law Center, that argues the Trump administration’s decision to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Admissions (DACA) program should be blocked in light of the pandemic.”
SILVER LININGS
|Ariane de Vogue with CNN looks at how the Supreme Court has been conducting its business in light of the ongoing public health crisis, noting its plans to hear oral arguments via teleconference next month and allowing the public to listen in. She writes, “The pandemic may have crippled the nation, but it also served to at least temporarily increase the transparency of the Supreme Court. While real-time audio would not stir much reaction in the other branches of government, it is a big, precedent-setting leap into the modern era for the Supreme Court.”
HERE'S HOPING
|“If you can do this now during a pandemic when everyone’s all over the place, then there’s really no excuse for not doing the same when things return to normal,” said GABE ROTH, Executive Director of Fix the Court, about the Supreme Court’s plans to allow the public to listen in live to its oral arguments next month. He spoke with Cara Bayles with Law360 about his hopes for courts’ transparency measures to continue after stay-at-home and social distancing measures are lifted.