Supreme Court Takes New First Amendment Public Employment Case

4United States Supreme Court 112904 Not exactly Garcetti II, but the United State Supreme Court yeserday granted certiorari in a case involving a ruling affirming a jury verdict for a police chief claiming retaliation under the First Amendment’s Petition Clause.  The case is Duryea v. Guarnieri (No. 09-1476).  (Here is the Third Circuit opinion below and the petition for writ of certiorari).

Although the Borough argues that this case should be handled like other free speech cases and be dismissed because the dispute does not meet the Connick “matter of public concern” test, the police chief argues that there should be different standards applied for Petition Clause claims as opposed to free speech claims.

Interestingly, a similar argument arises over whether the Connick/Pickering/Garcetti framework should apply in association claim cases under the First Amendment. 

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SCOTUS to Rule on Meaning of “Cocaine Base”

In a 1986 law that must surely rate as one of Congress’s most ill-informed overreactions to a high-profile tragedy– the cocaine-related death of college basketball star Len Bias — a new mandatory minimum ten-year sentence was created for drug offenders involved in dealing 50 or more grams of “cocaine base.”  Never mind that Bias used the powder form of cocaine.  Never mind that crack — the form of cocaine that everyone was most concerned about at the time — is only one type of cocaine base.  Congress instead chose to direct the harsh new penalties at cocaine base, a category that is narrower than all cocaine, but broader than just crack (at least if the term ”cocaine base” is understood literally).  As is now well known, the result of this unfortunate law has been to create massive racial disparities in federal drug sentencing between white defendants (who are typically involved with powder) and black defendants (who are more typically involved with crack). 

Although “cocaine base” cases normally involve what is undisputably crack, defendants have from time to time litigated whether a particular susbtance really triggers the ten-year minimum.  These cases have produced a longstanding circuit split, with six circuits (the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Tenth) reading “cocaine base” to encompass all forms cocaine that are chemically classified as a base, and five circuits holding that “cocaine base” means more narrowly what Congress was really concerned about, i.e., crack and other types of smokable cocaine base.  With today’s cert. grant in DePierre v. United States, 599 U.S. 25 (1st Cir. 2010), the Supreme Court appears poised finally to resolve the issue. 

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Burglary, Violence, and the Armed Career Criminal Act

The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics has issued a new report on victimization during household burglary, which might have important implications for the application of the Armed Career Criminal Act.  First, here are the report’s highlights on the burglary-violence connection:

  • A household member is present in about one-quarter of residential burlgaries.
  • A household member is violently vicitmized in about seven percent of residential burglaries (or about one-quarter of the burglaries in which a household member is present).
  • In residential burglaries, simple asault is the most common violent crime (3.7 percent of all burlgaries), while more serious violent crimes like rape (0.6 percent) and aggravated assault (1.3 percent) are far less frequent.
  • In a majority of even the “violent” burglaries, the victim indicates there is no injury; a “serious injury” is sustained in only 8.5 percent of the violent burglaries.
  • In the violent burglaries, fewer than forty percent of the offenders are armed.

Now, for the ACCA link. 

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