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While the Supreme Court of the United States has us on the edge of our seats as we await opinions and arguments in several hot topic cases, we’re only left with some SCOUTS snippets to get us through the day. SCOTUS Stats SCOTUSblog has released its Stat Pack for the October 2013 term and there are some surprising, and not so surprising facts to be gleaned. So far, the Ninth Circuit is leading the charge with most cases reversed – so far 5 – something that we’ve come to expect....

In a criminal sexual conduct habeas matter, dismissal of a habeas petition as barred by the one-year statute of limitations in 28 U.S.C. section 2244(d) is reversed where: 1) a timely motion for rehearing in a state supreme court on a post-conviction appeal tolls the time for a habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. section 2244(d); and 2) cases pending when the Supreme Court overruled prior circuit precedent in Lawrence v. Florida, 127 S....

If an employee is fired for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19, in most cases they do not qualify for state unemployment compensation. Employers have broad latitude in setting work requirements for employees, and mandating vaccination is one of them. That’s because employers who want to take steps to keep their workplaces safe for everyone may see unvaccinated workers as a risk. In most states, the law may consider refusal to get a vaccination when required by an employer as misconduct....

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to grant posthumous citizenship to former Nazi guard John Demjanjuk this week, finding that the appeal became moot when Demjanjuk died in March. It’s an anti-climatic end to a denaturalization case that spanned decades. John Demjanjuk, a native of Ukraine, was admitted to the United States in 1952 under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. He moved to Cleveland, and became a naturalized United States citizen in 1958....

On December 18, the House Select Committee on January 6 voted to refer former president and declared presidential candidate Donald Trump and a few of his associates to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution. No House investigative committee has ever recommended the prosecution of a former president before. A criminal referral certainly sounds ominous. But what is it really? And what impact does it have? What Is a Criminal Referral?...

If you’ve never been in court against a pro se litigant, that’s a good thing. That’s because it’s not a good thing when opposing parties know nothing about the law, think they know everything about it, and are generally embarrassing in court. We’re not talking about opposing counsel; that’s another story. We’re talking about the attorney wanna-be or the person who just can’t afford a real lawyer. Here are some tips for dealing with them....

Let’s say a blogger doesn’t agree with your political views and writes a blog post saying you “deserve to be killed.” Not great news, but the First Amendment protects political speech, right? What if the blogger takes it a step further and also shares your photo, your work address (along with suite number) and photos of your workplace? Threatened yet? Let’s say the blogger also references your colleague’s family’s murders that occurred years ago because of differing political opinions?...

Every year a new scandal breaks in NCAA Men’s College Basketball involving under-the-table payments to student-athletes. It turns out that the students directly responsible for making millions of dollars for their universities somehow think that it is okay for them to get a little compensation for their talent and hard work. But when top recruits with the University of North Carolina State, the University of Kansas, and the University of Louisville received illicit payments to attend their respective universities, the government swooped in to stop this horrifying practice of paying fair market value for services rendered....

In a prosecution for a drug-related offense, grant of defendant’s motion to suppress evidence is reversed and remanded where, although the district court was correct in finding that much of the information set forth in the affidavit was stale, the non-stale information was, on its own, sufficient to give rise to probable cause to believe that contraband or evidence of a crime would be present in defendant’s residence. Read US v....

US v. Brown, 09-3776, concerned a challenge to the district court’s imposition of a sentence of 150 months’ imprisonment, in a prosecution of defendant for possessing crack cocaine with the intent to distribute it. In reversing the sentence and remanding for resentencing, the court held that, in light of US v. Corner as, although defendant received a sentence that was one month less than the low end of the advisory range for powder cocaine career offenders, it is not known how the district court would have sentenced defendant had it known it could disagree with the crack/powder disparity inherent in the career offender guideline....

Securities Fraud Conviction Reversed In US v. Goyal, No. 08-10436, the court reversed Defendant’s convictions for securities fraud and making materially false statements to auditors where 1) because defendant’s jury had no competent evidence of materiality before it, it could not have properly convicted him on any of the securities counts; 2) no evidence supported a finding that defendant knew that his company’s subsidiary’s commitments violated GAAP; and 3) there was no proof that defendant willfully concealed buy-in letters....

Petition for Review of Denial of Cancellation of Removal Denied In Wellington v. Holder, No. 09-4111, a petition for review of the BIA’s decision dismissing petitioner’s appeal from the denial of her application for cancellation of removal, the court denied the petition where a Certificate of Relief or similar state rehabilitative treatment did not preclude use of the underlying offense as a basis for removal under 8 U.S.C. section 1182(a)(2)(A)(i)(II) or as a basis for ineligibility for cancellation of removal under 8 U....

You Google yourself. Go ahead, admit it. We all do. (Some people, I hear, even Bing themselves.) But what if the Internet got your information wrong, giving you and everyone who Googled you an inaccurate view of your life? Do you have any recourse? For Thomas Robins, the chosen remedy was a lawsuit. When the “people search” website Spokeo published information about his life and got that information significantly wrong, Robins sued the company for violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act....

The past decade has left many law schools lamenting, “Where have all the law students gone?” Whether the six-figure cost or the tough job market is to blame, the drop in applications was significant. However, new data reveals the trends in law school attendance might be a little more complex. The Law School Admission Council’s data on law school application volume for the 2019-2020 school year provides some interesting insight into who is applying for law school, and why....

CNN recently released a list of fast facts on past and present CIA directors. Among those listed is former Director of Central Intelligence William Hedgcock Webster, who traces his roots to right here in the Eighth Circuit. For practitioners gunning for a more varied career, here’s how one person went from serving as a U.S. Attorney and an Eighth Circuit judge to becoming the 14th Director of Central Intelligence. Born in St....

The Tenth Circuit has vacated a court order granting a motion to allow the involuntary medication of the defendant. Reydecel Chavez is a native of Mexico and was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922, of being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm, also in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922, and reentry of a removed alien, in violation of 8 U....

The 71st Judicial Conference of the Third Circuit is scheduled for May 7-9, and registration is now open. The conference will be held at the Hershey Lodge in Hershey, Pennsylvania, a/k/a, “The Sweetest Place on Earth®,” for all you chocolate lovers (Sidebar: this would be me if I were there). The Nitty Gritty If you register before March 1, 2014, the fee for the conference is $395, and the fee goes up to $480 if you register after March 1, and after April 18, 2014, the fee shoots up to $535....

It sounds like one of Jerry Seinfeld’s rejected comedy routines: “And what’s the deal with Ohio and voting restrictions?” With Ohio’s voter ID law headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Sixth Circuit decided another bit of Ohio’s election law. But this one’s a little bit different. In Ohio, the deadline for obtaining an absentee ballot is 6 p.m. the Friday before Election Day. This means that if a person is jailed after 6 p....

Idaho’s ban on abortions that occur after 20 weeks of pregnancy has been struck down as unconstitutional by the Ninth Circuit. That law placed an arbitrary time limit on abortions before viability, the Court found, and violated women’s constitutional right to obtain an abortion before fetal viability. The case arose after Idaho prosecuted a single mother of three for inducing her own abortion. The Ninth had recently struck down a similar law in Arizona, but several other states have enacted laws limiting abortion after the 20th week of pregnancy....

Traditionally, collective bargaining in the U.S. involves labor negotiations with management in one workplace or one company. On Labor Day, however, California took collective bargaining to a new level. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that gives workers in one entire industry — fast food — unprecedented powers to negotiate wages and working conditions for all 556,000 Californians working in those establishments. It’s called “sectoral bargaining,” where the terms of an agreement cover an entire occupation or industry instead of workers at one company or workplace....