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U.S. Supreme Court Justices to Decide if State Gun Laws Violate Rights

By David Badertscher, PLL

Source: Washington Post and Associated Press, October 1, 2009.

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Justices to Decide if State Gun Laws Violate Rights
"The Supreme Court set up a historic decision on gun control Wednesday, saying it will rule on whether restrictive state and local laws violate the Second Amendment right to gun ownership that it recognized last year."
(By Robert Barnes, The Washington Post)  (The case is Otis McDonald et. al. v. City of Chicago. See Petition for a Write of Certiorati at:

http://www.chicagoguncase.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/mcdonald_cert_petition1.pdf

Other Cases Scheduled to Go Before U.S. Supreme Court.

Samantar v. Yousuf
The court agreed to consider throwing out a human rights lawsuit against a former prime minister of Somalia who is accused of overseeing killings and other atrocities. A federal judge said Mohamed Ali Samantar could not be sued, but an appeals court said the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act applies to countries, not to people.

Carr v. United States
The court agreed to clarify whether new, harsher penalties for sex offenders who do not register with state sex offender databases can be imposed retroactively on people who broke the law before Congress approved the penalties.

Berghuis v. Thompkins
The court used a Michigan case to decide whether police can continue to talk to suspects who acknowledge that they understand their Miranda rights but do not immediately invoke them by requesting a lawyer or asking that questioning end.

Berghuis v. Smith
The court agreed to hear arguments about whether a black man's conviction by an all-white jury in Michigan should be thrown out because of what an appeals court called the "systematic exclusion" of African-Americans in the county's jury pool.

Full post as published by New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library on October 01, 2009 (boomark / email).