Criminal Law Decisions in the U.S. Supreme Court Taking a Surprising Turn
Our affiliate, Total Criminal Defense, has a nice round-up of some of the most recent Supreme Court decisions in criminal law and some of the 2006 Supreme Court highlights, and as I read through them it occurred to me that, at least insofar as criminal cases are concerned, the current U.S. Supreme Court isn’t behaving exactly as I would have expected. By that, I mean that a number of decisions have come down in favor of defendants, and not all in egregious cases that clearly required that outcome.
Of course, Wednesday’s rulings in three separate Texas death penalty cases are at the forefront right now, especially in Texas, where defense attorneys are flipping optimistically through files and prosecutor’s are locking the doors and hoping for a miracle after practices employed in dozens of death penalty cases in Texas were nixed by the high court.
At this point, though, the decision hardly comes as a surprise. Here, in a nutshell, are a few of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in criminal cases over the past two years:
- Although a co-occupant usually has the right to consent to a search, that consent is NOT valid as to a defendant who is present and denies permission to search. The court employed this real-life, common sense analogy: If you went to someone’s house to visit and one tenant invited you in, but the other said you could not enter, you probably wouldn’t feel that you were welcome to go on in.
- Findings of fact required for sentence enhancements must be made by a jury, and are subject to the same “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard as facts required to prove the elements of the crime.
- Deprivation of a defendant’s right to counsel of his choice is complete when the attorney of his choosing is prevented from representing him, regardless of the quality of the performance of alternate counsel.
