Punitive, or Not Punitive to Register

A very unusual ruling, at the cusp of right to jury trial and constitutional issue of whether a requirement to register as a sex offender is or is not punitive, for a person not convicted of a misdemeanor sex offense but required to register is available at this link, made available by the one and only Doc Berman.

Modus Operandi

Just one more case of Texas "justice" ...
click here, and thank you, Howard Bashman, for the link.

Uttecht and Criminal Jury trial(s) in Supreme Court Tuesday

Via SCOTUSblog:

The Supreme Court will hear oral argument (Tuesday, 4/17) in No. 06-413, Uttecht v. Brown. Lyle Denniston's preview of the case can be found here. A collection of other blog commentary on the case is below:

In Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute Bulletin, Kelly Cooke & Heidi Guetschow preview the capital case here. Ross Runkel has this preview and prediction at the Supreme Court Times. Here, the Death Penalty Information Center gives a brief synopsis of the jury selection case.

Capital Defense Weekly has this post discussing Uttecht v. Brown; Doug Berman of Sentencing Law and Policy weighs in on the Court's decision to grant certiorari in this case here; Edward Bills has this post discussing the Seattle case at the Bodily Injury Blog.

UPDATE: The oral argument transcript in Uttecht v. Brown is now available here.

Trends and Updates

A few interesting things to note:

Judicial Activism is not necessarily always a "liberal" phenomenon, esp. in the area of Seventh Amendment jury trial right, (re judges taking matters away from jury via summary judgments) (hat tip scotus)

And excellent piece by Jonathan Hafetz "American Justice on the line" from Huffington Post referncing Federalist #84. Hafetz is one of Al-Marri's lawyers, (see below).

There is a lot happening in the Fourth Circuit with the case of Al-Marri v. Wright (docket 06-7427) which plans to hold a hearing on it early in February. Scoot over to SCOTUSblog for all that. Judge Robertson's Order dismissing Hamdan's case from last week is over there too.

Find links to Carey v. Musladin commentary by Prof Amar and Maryland high court ruling halting executions at Standdown Texas.

Doug Berman (SL and P) asks whether the PROSECUTOR should request clemency for Genarlow Wilson. The comments (4) illustrate what I was talking about here this morning concerning my friend who thinks PROSECUTORS OFFICES are where you can really make a difference in this area of the law.