Summary: This week the court heard six cases in oral arguments, issued its first opinion of the 2011 term and Justice Thomas issued the term's first dissent from a denial of certiorari. This week, in an extended podcast, we review the following seven cases: Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, which the court heard in oral arguments on Monday both of which ask the court to resolve the open question of whether defendants are entitled to effective assistance of counsel during the plea stage of a criminal prosecution, even where the defendant ultimately received a fair trial or knowingly and voluntarily accepted a plea deal. Cavazos v. Smith, which concerns the questionable state court conviction of a grandmother accused of assaulting a baby by shaking it violently resulting in the infant's death. While nearly everyone agrees that the California jury's verdict is questionable the Supreme Court in a divided opinion cautions that there is nothing the federal courts can do about it. Utah Highway Patrol v. American Atheists, Inc., a case which concerns whether the placement of crosses on public lands in Utah to memorialize slain police officers constitutes a government endorsement of religion in violation of the First Amendment. Minneci v. Pollard, wherein the Supreme Court must decide whether to allow a new category of constitutional law suits - claims against federal contractors for violations of constitutional rights. The case stems out of a Bivens claim brought by a prisoner in a federal facility run by federal contractors for cruel and unusual punishment after they required Pollard to where handcuffs for six and a half hours in order to see a doctor after he broke both his arms in an accident, then refused to give him a splint the doctor recommended he wear and failed to help him eat or bathe himself, neither of which he was capable of doing adequately on his own. Perry v. New Hampshire in which the court considers whether a defendant can seek constitutional due process protection from a potentially unreliable out of court identification where no state action was involved in creating the suggestive and potentially unreliable circumstances of the identification. And, Rehberg v. Paulk, a case which seeks answers to the question of to what extent a person who is acting as a complaining witness - that is a person who comes forward and accuses a person of a crime often resulting in a criminal prosecution - is immune from civil liability when the testimony they give before a grand jury is false and causes a specious criminal prosecution to ensue causing harm to an innocent defendant. OPINION (click to download) Cavazos v. Smith (10-1115) DISSENT FROM DENIAL OF CERTIORARI (click to download) Utah Highway Patrol v. American Atheists, Inc. (10-1276) ORAL ARGUMENT TRANSCRIPTS AND AUDIO (click to download) Lafler v. Cooper (10-209) Audio Transcript Missouri v. Frye (10-444) Audio Transcript Rehberg v. Paulk (10-788) Audio Transcript Minneci v. Pollard (10-1104) Audio Transcript Perry v. New Hampshire (10-8974) Audio Transcript Gonzalez v. Thaler (10-895) Audio Transcript
