Background
The respondent, Marvin Howard Bockting, of Las Vegas, Nevada, was accused of sexual assault of his wife Laura's six-year-old daughter. A police detective interviewed the victim in the presence of her mother, and physical evidence was gathered at a hospital. The grand jury indicted Bockting on four counts of sexual assault on a minor under 14 years of age. The victim testified at the preliminary hearing, and Bockting was held over for trial. [1]
At trial, the court held a hearing to determine whether the victim could testify. Finding that Autumn was too distressed to be sworn in, the State moved to allow Laura Bockting and the detective to recount the victim's statements to the jury. Under Nevada law, out-of-court statements made by a child under 10 years of age describing acts of sexual assault or physical abuse of the child may be admitted if the court finds that the child is unavailable or unable to testify and that "the time, content and circumstances of the statement provide sufficient circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness." [2] The court found sufficient evidence of reliability to admit the testimony.
After hearing the evidence, the jury found Bockting guilty of three counts of sexual assault on a minor under the age of 14, and the court imposed two consecutive life sentences and another concurrent life sentence.
Procedural history
Bockting appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court, alleging that by allowing the out-of-court statements to be read to the jury, the state had violated Bockting's confrontation clause rights under the Sixth Amendment. That Court held that the admission of the testimony was constitutional. [3]
Bockting then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus with the United States District Court for the District of Nevada, making the same argument. The Court denied the petition, stating that Bockting was not entitled to relief under the habeas statute. Bockting appealed that decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. While the appeal to the Ninth Circuit was pending, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Crawford v. Washington, in which the Court held that testimony of witnesses absent from trial are admissible only where the declarant is unavailable, and only where the defendant has had a prior opportunity to cross-examine the witness. The Ninth Circuit held that Crawford applied retroactively, and reversed the lower court decision. [4] The State appealed, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari .
Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.S. 836 (1990), was a U.S. Supreme Court case involving the Sixth Amendment. The Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause, which provides criminal defendants with the right to confront witnesses against them, did not bar the use of one-way closed-circuit television to present testimony by an alleged child sex abuse victim.
Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U.S. 348 (2004), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that a requirement that a different Supreme Court decision requiring the jury rather than the judge to find aggravating factors would not be applied retroactively.
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.
House v. Bell, 547 U.S. 518 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court case challenging the permissibility of new DNA forensic evidence that becomes available post-conviction, in capital punishment appeals when those claims have defaulted pursuant to state law. The Court found that admitting new DNA evidence was in line with Schlup v. Delo (1995), which allows cases to be reopened in light of new evidence.
R v Mohan, 1994 CanLII 80, [1994] 2 SCR 9 is a leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on the use of expert witnesses in trial testimony.
Superintendent v. Hill, 472 U.S. 445 (1985), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that due process required that prison disciplinary decisions to revoke good-time credits must be supported by "some evidence."
In law, unring the bell is an analogy used to suggest the difficulty of forgetting information once it is known. When discussing jury trials, the phrase is sometimes used to describe the judge's instructions to the jury to ignore inadmissible evidence or statements they have heard. It may also be used if inadmissible evidence has been brought before a jury and the judge subsequently declares a mistrial.
Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510 (2003), is a case in which the United States Supreme Court spelled out standards for "effectiveness" in the constitutional right to legal counsel guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. Previously the court had determined that the Sixth Amendment included the right to "effective assistance" of legal counsel, but it did not specify what constitutes "effective", thus leaving the standards for effectiveness vague. In Wiggins v. Smith, the court set forth the American Bar Association Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases Guideline 11.8.6.(1989), as a specific guideline by which to measure effectiveness and competence of legal counsel.
Bigby v. Dretke 402 F.3d 551, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard a case appealed from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas on the issue of the instructions given to a jury in death penalty sentencing. The decision took into account the recent United States Supreme Court decisions concerning the relevance of mitigating evidence in sentencing, as in Penry v. Lynaugh.
Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56 (1980), is a United States Supreme Court decision dealing with the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Sharon Faye Keller is the Presiding Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. She is a Republican.
Zane Michael Floyd is an American convicted mass murderer who at the age of 23 killed four people and injured a fifth in a supermarket in Las Vegas, Nevada, on June 3, 1999. After being convicted of the murders, Floyd was sentenced to death by a Clark County jury.
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.
It emerged in late 2014 that Bill Cosby, an American media personality, sexually assaulted dozens of women throughout his career. Cosby made significant contributions to American and African-American culture, and is well known in the United States for his eccentric image, and gained a reputation as "America's Dad" for his portrayal of Cliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show (1984–1992). He received numerous awards and honorary degrees throughout his career, most of which have since been revoked.
Davis v. Ayala, 576 U.S. 257 (2015), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States upheld a death sentence of a Hispanic defendant despite the fact that all Blacks and Hispanics were rejected from the jury during the defendant's trial. The case involved a habeas corpus petition submitted by Hector Ayala, who was arrested and tried in the late 1980s for the alleged murder of three individuals during an attempted robbery of an automobile body shop in San Diego, California in April 1985. At trial, the prosecution used peremptory challenges to strike all Black and Hispanic jurors who were available for jury service. The trial court judge allowed the prosecution to explain the basis for the peremptory challenges outside the presence of Ayala's counsel, "so as not to disclose trial strategy". Ayala was ultimately sentenced to death, but he filed several appeals challenging the constitutionality of the trial court's decision to exclude his counsel from the hearings.
Foster v. Chatman, 578 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the state law doctrine of res judicata does not preclude a Batson challenge against peremptory challenges if new evidence has emerged. The Court held the state courts' Batson analysis was subject to federal jurisdiction because "[w]hen application of a state law bar 'depends on a federal constitutional ruling, the state-law prong of the court’s holding is not independent of federal law, and our jurisdiction is not precluded,'" under Ake v. Oklahoma.
Howes v. Fields, 565 U.S. 499 (2012), was a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that an interrogation of a prisoner was not a custodial interrogation per se, and certainly it was not "clearly established federal law" that it was custodial, as would be required by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). Instead, the Court said, whether the interrogation was custodial depended on the specific circumstances, and moreover, in the particular circumstances of this case, it was not custodial. This decision overturned the rule of the Sixth Circuit, and denied the prisoner's habeas corpus petition.
Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465 (1976), was decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that limited which claims of Fourth Amendment violations could be made by state prisoners in habeas corpus petitions in federal courts. Specifically, a claim that the exclusionary rule had been broken would be barred if state courts had already given it a full and fair hearing. The decision combined two cases that were argued before the Supreme Court on the same day with similar issues, one filed by Lloyd Powell and the other, titled Wolff v. Rice, filed by David Rice.
Vega v. Tekoh, 597 U.S. ___ (2022), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held, 6–3, that an officer's failure to read Miranda warnings to a suspect in custody does not alone provide basis for a claim of civil liability under Section 1983 of United States Code. In the case, the Court reviewed its previous holding of Miranda v. Arizona (1966) to determine whether respondent Carlos Vega violated plaintiff Terence Tekoh's constitutional rights by failing to read Tekoh his Miranda rights prior to interrogation. Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the six-justice majority that Tekoh's Fifth Amendment rights were not violated, as Miranda rights are "not themselves rights protected by the Constitution."
Hemphill v. New York, 595 U.S. ___ (2022), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court involving the application of Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. In its decision, the Court ruled on when a criminal defendant who opens the door to otherwise inadmissible evidence also opens the door to evidence that would otherwise be excluded by the Confrontation Clause.
