An Alford plea, in United States law, is a guilty plea in criminal court, whereby a defendant in a criminal case does not admit to the criminal act and asserts innocence. In entering an Alford plea, the defendant admits that the evidence presented by the prosecution would be likely to persuade a judge or jury to find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Jury nullification (US) or a perverse verdict (UK) generally occurs when members of a criminal trial jury believe that a defendant is guilty, but choose to acquit the defendant anyway because the jurors also believe that the law itself is unjust, that the prosecutor has misapplied the law in the defendant's case, or that the potential punishment for breaking the law is too harsh. Some juries have also refused to convict due to their own prejudices in favour of the defendant.
Entrapment is a practice whereby a law enforcement agent or 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. 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.
Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that a prosecutor's use of peremptory challenge in a criminal case—the dismissal of jurors without stating a valid cause for doing so—may not be used to exclude jurors based solely on their race. The Court ruled that this practice violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case gave rise to the term Batson challenge, an objection to a peremptory challenge based on the standard established by the Supreme Court's decision in this case. Subsequent jurisprudence has resulted in the extension of Batson to civil cases and cases where jurors are excluded on the basis of sex.
Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303 (1880), was a United States Supreme Court case about racial discrimination and United States constitutional criminal procedure. Strauder was the first instance where the Supreme Court reversed a state court decision denying a defendant's motion to remove his criminal trial to federal court pursuant to Section 3 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005), is a United States Supreme Court decision on criminals' sentences. The Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment right to jury trial requires that other than a prior conviction, only facts admitted by a defendant or proved beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury may be used to calculate a sentence exceeding the prescribed statutory maximum sentence, whether the defendant has pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial. The maximum sentence that a judge may impose is based upon the facts admitted by the defendant or proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.
Scheidler v. National Organization for Women, 547 U.S. 9 (2006), was a lengthy and high-profile U.S. legal case interpreting and applying the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO): a law originally drafted to combat the mafia and organized crime, the Hobbs Act: an anti-extortion law prohibiting interference with commerce by violence or threat of violence, and the Travel Act: a law prohibiting interstate travel in support of racketeering.
Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192 (1991), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court reversed the conviction of John L. Cheek, a tax protester, for willful failure to file tax returns and tax evasion. The Court held that an actual good-faith belief that one is not violating the tax law, based on a misunderstanding caused by the complexity of the tax law, negates willfulness, even if that belief is irrational or unreasonable. The Court also ruled that an actual belief that the tax law is invalid or unconstitutional is not a good faith belief based on a misunderstanding caused by the complexity of the tax law, and is not a defense.
Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U.S. 500 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court decision involving Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which provides a private cause of action to victims of employment discrimination. The Court ruled that Title VII's "employee-numerosity requirement," which limits potential defendants to those maintaining at least fifteen employees, is not a limit on a court's jurisdiction to hear Title VII claims. The requirement is instead a substantive element of a Title VII claim, which means that a defendant must raise the issue prior to verdict or the requirement will be waived.
Rita v. United States, 551 U.S. 338 (2007), was a United States Supreme Court case that clarified how federal courts of appeals should implement the remedy for the Sixth Amendment violation identified in United States v. Booker. In Booker, the Court held that because the Federal Sentencing Guidelines were mandatory and binding on judges in criminal cases, the Sixth Amendment required that any fact necessary to impose a sentence above the top of the authorized Guidelines range must be found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. The Booker remedy made the Guidelines merely advisory and commanded federal appeals courts to review criminal sentences for "reasonableness." Rita clarified that a sentence within the Guidelines range may be presumed "reasonable."
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.
West v. Barnes, 2 U.S. 401 (1791), was the first United States Supreme Court decision and the earliest case calling for oral argument. Van Staphorst v. Maryland (1791) was docketed prior to West v. Barnes but settled before the Court heard the case: West was argued on August 2, 1791 and decided on August 3, 1791. Collet v. Collet (1791) was the first appellate case docketed with the Court but was dropped before it could be heard. Supreme Court Reporter Alexander Dallas did not publish the justices' full opinions in West v. Barnes, which were published in various newspapers around the country at the time, but he published an abbreviated summary of the decisions.
Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609 (1965), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled, by a 6-2 vote, that it is a violation of a defendant's Fifth Amendment rights for the prosecutor to comment to the jury on the defendant's declining to testify, or for the judge to instruct the jury that such silence is evidence of guilt.
United States v. Weitzenhoff, 35 F.3d 1275 is a legal opinion from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that addresses the confusing mens rea requirement of a federal environmental law that imposed criminal sanctions on certain polluters. The main significance of the court's opinion was that it interpreted the word "knowingly" in the statute to mean a general awareness of the wrongfulness of one's actions or the likelihood of illegality, rather than an actual knowledge of the statute being violated. Circuit Court Judge Betty Binns Fletcher authored the majority's legal opinion in this case.
Fujifilm Corp v. Benun, 605 F.3d 1366 was a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the judgment made by the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey that the defendants infringed patents owned by Fujifilm Corporation.
United States v. Kilbride, 584 F.3d 1240 is a case from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejecting an appeal from two individuals convicted of violating the Can Spam Act and US obscenity law. The defendants were appealing convictions on 8 counts from the District Court of Arizona for distributing pornographic spam via email. The second count which the defendants were found guilty of involved the falsification of the "From" field of email headers, which is illegal to do multiple times in commercial settings under 18 USC § 1037(a)(3). The case is particularly notable because of the majority opinion on obscenity, in which Judge Fletcher writes an argument endorsing the use of a national community obscenity standard for the internet.
Schmuck v. United States, 489 U.S. 705 (1989), is a United States Supreme Court decision on criminal law and procedure. By a 5–4 margin it upheld the mail fraud conviction of an Illinois man and resolved a conflict among the appellate circuits over which test to use to determine if a defendant was entitled to a jury instruction allowing conviction on a lesser included charge. Justice Harry Blackmun wrote for the majority; Antonin Scalia for the dissent.
The Supreme Court of the United States handed down eighteen per curiam opinions during its 2015 term, which began October 5, 2015 and concluded October 2, 2016.
Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1 (1978), is a United States Supreme Court decision that clarified both the scope of the protection against double jeopardy provided by the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and the limits of an appellate court's discretion to fashion a remedy under section 2106 of Title 28 to the United States Code. It established the constitutional rule that where an appellate court reverses a criminal conviction on the ground that the prosecution failed to present sufficient evidence to prove the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the Double Jeopardy Clause shields the defendant from a second prosecution for the same offense. Notwithstanding the power that appellate courts have under section 2106 to "remand the cause and direct the entry of such appropriate judgment, decree, or order, or require such further proceedings to be had as may be just under the circumstances," a court that reverses a conviction for insufficiency of the evidence may not allow the lower court a choice on remand between acquitting the defendant and ordering a new trial. The "only 'just' remedy" in this situation, the Court held, is to order an acquittal.
