Following up on the Supreme Court's Padilla v. Kentucky holding that non-citizen criminal defendants must be advised of any risk of deportation associated with a guilty plea, En banc Second Circuit: If a guilty plea could lead to denaturalization and deportation, lawyers must advise their clients of that fact or they're giving unconstitutionally ineffective counsel.
In 2022, a district judge finds Hinds County, Miss. officials in contempt of a federal consent decree after monitors report that a portion of its jail is essentially run by gangs. About 30 cells are used as dumpsters. Lights don't work. The majority of cell doors do not lock. Inmates regularly escape through the roof and return with contraband. Disliked inmates are assaulted, not allowed to eat. (Two such inmates are discovered emaciated and covered in feces and sores.) Hinds County: The real "constitutional abomination" here is the consent decree, which is the cause of all these problems.
Does law enforcement's use of a "pole camera" to film the front of someone's home amount to a "search" under the Fourth Amendment? Seventh Circuit (2021): No. Seventh Circuit (2024): Still no. Concurrence: On a blank slate, I'd say yes.
Throughout his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump signaled he would resume federal executions if he won and make more people eligible for capital punishment, including child rapists, migrants who kill U.S. citizens and law enforcement officers, and those convicted of drug and human trafficking.
Lisa Montgomery, 52, was killed by lethal injection at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, and pronounced dead at 1:31 a.m. (Eastern Time) Wednesday (article available here). She was the first woman to be executed by the federal government since 1953 and was the only woman on death row.
A federal judge granted Mrs. Montgomery a stay of execution Tuesday for a competency hearing -- just hours before she was scheduled to be executed.
The United States District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday ordered a stay of execution for Cory Johnson and Dustin Higgs, both of whom were scheduled to be executed on Thursday and Friday, respectively. "The injunction will remain in effect until March 16, 2021" to allow both men to recover from COVID-19 infections.
Maryland, where a federal jury returned a death sentence against Dustin Higgs in 2000, abolished capital punishment in 2013. That led the government to ask the court to amend its prior judgment and direct that Higgs be executed in Indiana, under Indiana law. His execution is set for January 15, 2021.
The federal government continued its series of post-election federal executions Friday by killing Alfred Bourgeois, the second Black man killed in 24 hours by the government (article available here). Mr. Bourgeois, 56, was pronounced dead at 8:21 p.m. Eastern Standard Time at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Brandon Bernard, a 40-year-old Black man sentenced to death at aged 18, was killed on Thursday by the federal government. He was pronounced dead at 9:27 p.m. and is the youngest person executed by the federal government in nearly 70 years and the ninth prisoner put to death since the current administration resumed executions in July following a 17-year hiatus (article available here). With his last words, Bernard spoke to the family of the victims, "I'm sorry.
Orlando Hall, 49, is the eighth inmate to be executed by the federal government this year after a 17-year hiatus on executions (article available here). A judge's stay over concerns about the execution drug gave Hall a reprieve, but for less than six hours. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the stay, he was killed via lethal injection late Thursday at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, where he was pronounced dead at 11:47 p.m.