SCOTUS to Decide on Padilla Retroactivity

Earlier today, the Supreme Court granted cert. in Chaidez v. United States, 655 F.3d 684 (7th Cir. 2011). Chaidez held that the Court’s decision in Padilla v. Kentucky, 130 S. Ct. 1473 (2010), would not be applied retroactively to defendants whose convictions were already final when Padilla came out. In Padilla, the Court held that a lawyer performs below minimal constitutional standards when he or she fails to advise a client of the deportation risks of a guilty plea. Now, the Court itself will have an opportunity to determine whether its decision should have retroactive effect.

The majority and dissenting judges in Chaidez all agreed that the case turned on whether Padilla announced a new rule of criminal procedure, within the meaning of Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989). With only a couple of execeptions not relevant here, Teague prohibits retroactivity for new rules. So, the question in Chaidez seems to boil down to whether Padilla announced a new rule or merely applied the basic ineffective assistance test of Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984).

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Connecticut Abolishes the Death Penalty

The campaign to end the death penalty received a boost last week when Connecticut decided to abandon the use of capital punishment.  Connecticut is the fifth state in the last eight years and the seventeenth state overall to do away with capital punishment.

Repeal proposals are being debated in Kansas and Kentucky, and anti-capital punishment groups have also succeeded in getting the issue directly to the voters of California.  An initiative to end capital punishment will be on the California ballot this coming November.

Of course it will take some time before capital punishment is ended in Texas and in assorted states in the Deep South.  But one can be more optimistic than ever before that the United States will eventually end capital punishment. Its continued use is an embarrassment for the nation in the world community.

How irrational, primitive, and bloodthirsty champions of capital punishment seem to this observer.  There is no credible evidence that the possibility of capital punishment has a deterrent effect.  Eye-for-an-eye thinking seems a remnant of Biblical times, if not earlier.  And a genuine and abiding respect for humanity precludes killing even the worst of the wrongdoers among us.

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Prof. O’Meara on Stand Your Ground

With the Trayvon Martin case drawing national attention to self-defense law, our own Professor O’Meara has a New York Times op-ed on Stand Your Ground laws.  He argues that the laws are unnecessary because traditional self-defense law provides ample protection for defenders who use lethal force appropriately.  He observes:

In my home state of Wisconsin, a large group of criminal prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges could come up with only one case in which any homeowner was prosecuted when he shot someone who entered his home illegally. That conviction was later overturned.

Stand Your Ground laws may thus add little to the protection of individuals who act reasonably, but they risk impeding the prosecution of others who are too quick to resort to deadly force.

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