The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution sets forth rights related to criminal prosecutions. It was ratified in 1791 as part of the United States Bill of Rights. The Supreme Court has applied all but one of this amendment's protections to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Entrapment is a practice in which a law enforcement agent or an agent of the state induces a person to commit a "crime" that the person would have otherwise been unlikely or unwilling to commit. It "is the conception and planning of an offense by an officer or agent, and the procurement of its commission by one who would not have perpetrated it except for the trickery, persuasion or fraud of the officer or state agent".
United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259 (1990), was a United States Supreme Court decision that determined that Fourth Amendment protections do not apply to searches and seizures by United States agents of property owned by a nonresident alien in a foreign country.
United States v. Constantine, 296 U.S. 287 (1935), was a case before the United States Supreme Court that concerned liquor laws and taxation. Congress placed a tax on liquor dealers who violate state liquor laws. The Court struck down the relevant portion of the Revenue Act of 1926 as an attempt to punish a state violation through taxation.
Jacobson v. United States, 503 U.S. 540 (1992), is a case decided by the United States Supreme Court regarding the criminal procedure topic of entrapment. A narrowly divided court overturned the conviction of a Nebraska man for receiving child pornography through the mail, ruling that postal inspectors had implanted a desire to do so through repeated written entreaties.
Sherman v. United States, 356 U.S. 369 (1958), was a United States Supreme Court case on the issue of entrapment. Unanimously, the Court overturned the conviction of a recovering New York drug addict who had been repeatedly solicited for drug sales by a fellow former addict who was working with federal agents.
United States v. Russell, 411 U.S. 423 (1973), is a Supreme Court case dealing with the entrapment defense. The court split 5-4 and maintained the subjective theory that had first been adopted in Sorrells v. United States, 287 U.S. 435 (1932). Although an undercover federal agent had helped procure a key ingredient for an illegal methamphetamine manufacturing operation, and assisted in the process, the Court followed its earlier rulings on the subject and found that the defendant had a predisposition to make and sell illegal drugs whether he worked with the government or not.
Hampton v. United States, 425 U.S. 484 (1976), is a United States Supreme Court decision on the subject of Entrapment. By a 5–3 margin, the Court upheld the conviction of a Missouri man for selling heroin even though all the drug sold was supplied to him, he claimed, by a Drug Enforcement Administration informant who had, in turn, gotten it from the DEA. The majority held that the record showed Hampton was predisposed to sell drugs no matter his source.
The Webb–Kenyon Act was a 1913 law of the United States that regulated the interstate transport of alcoholic beverages. It was meant to provide federal support for the prohibition efforts of individual states in the face of charges that state regulation of alcohol usurped the federal government's exclusive constitutional right to regulate interstate commerce.
The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution creates several constitutional rights, limiting governmental powers focusing on criminal procedures. It was ratified, along with nine other articles, in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights.
Street v. New York, 394 U.S. 576 (1969), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a New York state law making it a crime "publicly [to] mutilate, deface, defile, or defy, trample upon, or cast contempt upon either by words or act [any flag of the United States]" was, in part, unconstitutional because it prohibited speech against the flag. The Court left for a later day the question of whether it is constitutional or unconstitutional to prohibit, without reference to the utterance of words, the burning of the flag.
Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132 (1925), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court that upheld the warrantless searches of an automobile, which is known as the automobile exception. The case has also been cited as widening the scope of search.
Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623 (1887), was an important United States Supreme Court case in which the 7–1 opinion of Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan and the lone partial dissent by Associate Justice Stephen Johnson Field laid the foundation for the Supreme Court's later acceptance and defense during the Lochner era of Justice Field's theory of economic substantive due process under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Cooper Manufacturing Co. v. Ferguson, 113 U.S. 727 (1885), was a suit regarding the legitimacy of a sale of a steam engine and other machinery in the State of Ohio.
Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 557 U.S. 305 (2009), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that it was a violation of the Sixth Amendment right of confrontation for a prosecutor to submit a chemical drug test report without the testimony of the person who performed the test. While the court ruled that the then-common practice of submitting these reports without testimony was unconstitutional, it also held that so called "notice-and-demand" statutes are constitutional. A state would not violate the Constitution through a "notice-and-demand" statute by both putting the defendant on notice that the prosecution would submit a chemical drug test report without the testimony of the scientist and also giving the defendant sufficient time to raise an objection.
Outrageous Government Conduct is a criminal defense that presupposes the defendant's predisposition to commit the crime but seeks dismissal of the indictment on the ground that the conduct of law enforcement agents was "so outrageous that due process principles would absolutely bar the government from invoking judicial process to obtain a conviction." The defense must prove that law enforcement agents' tactics violated "that 'fundamental fairness, shocking to the universal sense of justice,' mandated by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment." The Outrageous Government Conduct defense is related to but distinct from the entrapment defense. The Outrageous Government Conduct defense is a bar to prosecution which is decided by the judge based on legal theory while entrapment is an affirmative defense which is considered, potentially, by a jury. Additionally, predisposition to commit a crime is irrelevant to the Outrageous Government Conduct defense and can succeed despite evidence of predisposition.
Glasser v. United States, 315 U.S. 60 (1942), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court on two issues of constitutional criminal procedure. Glasser was the first Supreme Court decision to hold that the Assistance of Counsel Clause of the Sixth Amendment required the reversal of a criminal defendant's conviction if his lawyer's representation of him was limited by a conflict of interest.
Washington v. Texas, 388 U.S. 14 (1967), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court decided that the Compulsory Process Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution is applicable in state courts as well as federal courts. Jackie Washington had attempted to call his co-defendant as a witness, but was blocked by Texas courts because state law prevented co-defendants from testifying for each other, under the theory that they would be likely to lie for each other on the stand.
The Chase Court (1864–1873) issued thirty-five opinions in criminal cases over nine years, at a significantly higher rate than the Marshall Court or Taney Court before it. Notable such cases include Ex parte Milligan (1866), Pervear v. Massachusetts (1866), Ex parte McCardle, Ex parte Yerger (1868), and United States v. Kirby (1868).
