United States v. Dominguez Benitez, 542 U.S. 74 (2004), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that, in a criminal proceeding in federal court, a defendant who does not alert the district court to a possible violation of Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure must show on appeal that the violation affirmatively affected his rights in order to obtain reversal of his conviction by guilty plea. Rule 11, which pertains to criminal prosecutions in United States federal courts only, governs the offering of plea bargains to criminal defendants and the procedures district courts must employ to ensure that the defendant knows of and properly waives his trial-related constitutional rights.
Oregon v. Guzek, 546 U.S. 517 (2006), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled that the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution does not grant criminal defendants facing the death penalty the right to introduce new evidence of their innocence during sentencing that was not introduced during trial. Accordingly, states could constitutionally exclude such evidence from the sentencing phase of a capital trial.
The Supreme Court of the United States handed down sixteen per curiam opinions during its 2005 term, which lasted from October 3, 2005, until October 1, 2006.
The Supreme Court of the United States handed down eight per curiam opinions during its 2006 term, which began October 2, 2006 and concluded September 30, 2007.
Tennard v. Dretke, 542 U.S. 274 (2004), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court was asked whether evidence of the defendant's low IQ in a death penalty trial had been adequately presented to the jury for full consideration in the penalty phase of his trial. The Supreme Court held that not considering a defendant's low IQ would breach his Eighth Amendment rights and constitute a cruel and unusual punishment.
Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38 (2007), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that the federal appeals courts may not presume that a sentence falling outside the range recommended by the Federal Sentencing Guidelines is unreasonable. Applying this rule to the case at hand, it upheld a sentence of 36 months' probation imposed on a man who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute ecstasy in the face of a recommended sentence of 30 to 37 months in prison.
Greenlaw v. United States, 554 U.S. 237 (2008), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a federal appeals court may not sua sponte increase a defendant's sentence unless the government first files a notice of appeal.
Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a prison official's "deliberate indifference" to a substantial risk of serious harm to an inmate violates the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment. Farmer built on two previous Supreme Court decisions addressing prison conditions, Estelle v. Gamble and Wilson v. Seiter. The decision marked the first time the Supreme Court directly addressed sexual assault in prisons.
Mark Warren Bennett is a former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa and a professor at Drake University Law School.
The Supreme Court of the United States handed down nineteen per curiam opinions during its 2009 term, which began on October 5, 2009, and concluded October 3, 2010.
Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States holding that juvenile offenders cannot be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for non-homicide offenses.
The Supreme Court of the United States handed down ten per curiam opinions during its 2010 term, which began October 4, 2010 and concluded October 1, 2011.
South Carolina v. Catawba Indian Tribe, Inc., 476 U.S. 498 (1986), is an important U.S. Supreme Court precedent for aboriginal title in the United States decided in the wake of County of Oneida v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York State (1985). Distinguishing Oneida II, the Court held that federal policy did not preclude the application of a state statute of limitations to the land claim of a tribe that had been terminated, such as the Catawba tribe.
The Supreme Court of the United States handed down fourteen per curiam opinions during its 2011 term, which began October 3, 2011 and concluded September 30, 2012.
Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 576 U.S. 389 (2015), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held in a 5–4 decision that a pretrial detainee must prove only that force used by police is excessive according to an objective standard, not that a police officer was subjectively aware that the force used was unreasonable.
CRST Van Expedited, Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 578 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding whether a prevailing party must succeed on the merits to seek attorney's fees. In a unanimous decision authored by Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court held that a defendant need not succeed on the merits in order to be the prevailing party for the purposes of seeking attorney fees.
The Supreme Court of the United States handed down nine per curiam opinions during its 2016 term, which began October 3, 2016 and concluded October 1, 2017.
Cone v. Bell, 556 U.S. 449 (2009), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that a defendant was entitled to a hearing to determine whether prosecutors in his 1982 death penalty trial violated his right to due process by withholding exculpatory evidence. The defendant, Gary Cone, filed a petition for postconviction relief from a 1982 death sentence in which he argued that prosecutors violated his rights to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment by withholding police reports and witness statements that potentially could have shown that his drug addiction affected his behavior. In an opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court held that Cone was entitled to a hearing to determine whether the prosecution's failure to disclose exculpatory evidence violated Cone's right to due process; the Court noted that "the quantity and the quality of the suppressed evidence lends support to Cone’s position at trial that he habitually used excessive amounts of drugs, that his addiction affected his behavior during his crime spree". In 2016, Gary Cone died from natural causes while still sitting on Tennessee's death row.
Simpson vs. United States, 435 U.S. 6, was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a defendant cannot be sentenced under the punishments of both 18 U.S.C. 2113 (d) and 18 U.S.C. 924 (a) for armed robbery.
Kimmelman v. Morrison, 477 U.S. 365 (1986), was a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that clarified the relationship of the right to effective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment to other constitutional rights in criminal procedure. In this case, evidence against the defendant was probably seized illegally, violating the Fourth Amendment, but he lost the chance to argue that point due to his lawyer's ineffectiveness. The prosecution argued that the defendant's attempt to make a Sixth Amendment argument via a habeas corpus petition was really a way to sneak his Fourth Amendment argument in through the back door. The Court unanimously disagreed, and held that the Fourth Amendment issue and the Sixth Amendment issue represented different constitutional values, and had different requirements for prevailing in court, and therefore were to be treated separately by rules of procedure. Therefore, the habeas corpus petition could go forward. In its opinion, the Court also gave guidance on how to apply its decisions in Stone v. Powell and Strickland v. Washington.
