Blagojevich case request reject
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court won't reconsider its decision to reject former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's appeal of his corruption convictions.
The justices on Monday denied without comment a long-shot petition urging the court to take another look at the case.
The court first turned down Blagojevich's appeal on March 28. He challenged an appeals court ruling that said Blagojevich crossed the line when he sought money in exchange for naming someone to fill the vacant Senate seat once occupied by President Barack Obama.
Blagojevich argued that circumstances have changed because prosecutors said they won't retry him on five counts tossed by a federal appeals court. He said eliminating the possibility of retrial made his case a better candidate for the high court because there are no longer concerns about "piecemeal litigation."
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Justices dismiss GOP appeal over Virginia districts
WASHINGTON (AP) - A unanimous Supreme Court has dismissed a Republican appeal over congressional districts in Virginia.
The justices on Monday left in place a decision by a lower court that said Virginia illegally packed black voters into one district to make adjacent districts safer for Republican incumbents.
Republican members of Congress wanted the court to reinstate the districting map. But the justices ruled that the elected officials did not have the right to challenge the court ruling.
Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the court that there is no "record evidence that supports their claim of harm."
The same three-judge court that threw out the map drawn by the state Legislature in 2012 has since created new districts that are in place for the 2016 congressional elections.
The dispute concerned the old boundaries of Virginia's 3rd Congressional District, which is the only one in the state with a majority of African-American residents. Represented by Democrat Bobby Scott, the district ran from north of Richmond to the coastal cities of Norfolk and Newport News, and its shape has been described as a "grasping claw."
Scott's seat is one of 11 congressional districts in Virginia. Republicans who controlled the state Legislature when the new map was drawn in 2012 created districts that elected eight Republicans and three Democrats. At the same time, Democrats carried Virginia in the past two presidential elections and hold both Senate seats and the governor's office.
The lower court has since drawn a new congressional map, in which Scott's district is more compact and no longer includes Richmond, for use in this year's elections.
Republican House members wanted to preserve the map as it was adopted because they fear that a redrawn map could water down minority strength in Scott's district and increase the number of Democratic-leaning black voters in neighboring Republican districts.
The case is Wittman v. Personhuballah, 14-1504.
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Ruling helps federal workers file job bias claims
By Sam Hananel
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is making it easier for federal workers to file employment discrimination lawsuits after quitting their jobs over conditions they consider intolerable.
The justices ruled 7-1 Monday that workers who bring so-called "constructive discharge" claims have 45 days from the time they resign to begin the process. The court rejected the Justice Department's position that the clock should start running when the alleged abuse occurs.
The ruling gives employees more time to bring bias lawsuits for discriminatory acts that occurred months or years before legal action begins.
The court sided with Marvin Green, a former Colorado postmaster who says he was forced to quit his job due to racial discrimination. A federal appeals court dismissed Green's case after ruling that he waited too long to file a complaint.
Writing for the high court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Green's lawsuit was filed within the 45-day time period because the clock didn't start running until he actually resigned from his post.
Sotomayor said the ruling makes practical sense because some employees might delay resigning until they can afford to leave or for other reasons.
The case is important to federal workers, who aren't permitted to file an employment discrimination lawsuit until they first file an administrative claim with their agency. But the internal claim must be filed "within 45 days of the date of the matter alleged to be discriminatory."
The ruling resolves a split among lower courts about when the 45-day clock starts running for federal employees to notify their employers about the claims.
Justice Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court's only black justice, dissented, saying his colleagues have misread the statute. Thomas said it refers to conduct by the employer, not a worker's decision to quit his job.
Green, who is black, was serving as postmaster general in Englewood, Colorado, in 2008 when he decided to apply for a similar post in Boulder. After he was turned down, he contacted a Postal Service counselor to investigate whether race played a factor.
Relations with his supervisors soured after the discrimination complaint, and Green claimed he was a victim of retaliation. In 2009, his superiors suspended him without pay after accusing him of intentionally delaying the mail.
Green signed an agreement on Dec. 16, 2009, agreeing to leave the Postal Service in exchange for a promise the agency would not bring criminal charges against him. But he waited nearly two months to submit his resignation. And he didn't make a claim of constructive discharge until March 22, 2010.
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Court upends all white jury verdict, death sentence
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court upended the conviction and death sentence of a black Georgia man Monday because prosecutors violated the Constitution by excluding African-Americans from the all-white jury that determined his fate.
The 7-1 ruling in favor of death row inmate Timothy Tyrone Foster came in a case in which defense lawyers obtained strikingly frank notes from prosecutors detailing efforts to keep African-Americans off of Foster's jury. The decision broke no new ground in efforts to fight racial discrimination in jury selection, but underscored the importance of a 30-year-old high court ruling that took aim at the exclusion of minorities from juries.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court that "prosecutors were motivated in substantial part by race" when they struck African-Americans from the jury pool, focusing on the decision to exclude two black jurors. Two such jury strikes "on the basis of race are two more than the Constitution allows," Roberts wrote.
The high court returned Foster's case to state court, but Stephen Bright, Foster's Atlanta-based lawyer, said "there is no doubt" that the decision Monday means Foster is entitled to a new trial, 29 years after he was sentenced to death for killing a white woman.
The decision did nothing, however, to limit peremptory strikes, lawyers' ability to reject potential jurors without offering any reason. The late Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to serve on the Supreme Court, once said that racial discrimination would persist in jury selection unless peremptory strikes were curtailed.
Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, saying he would have respected the decisions of state judges who sided with prosecutors and rejected Foster's claims. Thomas, a Georgia native, recounted Foster's confession to having murdered a 79-year-old retired schoolteacher "after having sexually assaulted her with a bottle of salad dressing."
When the case was argued in November, the justices did little to hide their distaste for the tactics employed by prosecutors in north Georgia. Justice Elena Kagan said the case seemed as clear a violation "as a court is ever going to see."
Still, Georgia courts had consistently rejected Foster's claims of discrimination, even after his lawyers obtained prosecutors' notes that revealed their focus on the black people in the jury pool. In one example, a handwritten note headed "Definite No's" listed six people, of whom five were the remaining black prospective jurors.
The sixth person on the list was a white woman who made clear she would never impose the death penalty, according to Bright. And yet even that woman ranked behind the black jurors, he said.
The court was not persuaded by the state's argument that the notes focused on black people in the jury pool because prosecutors were preparing to defend against discrimination claims.
The Supreme Court's ruling about race discrimination in jury selection was about a year old when Foster's case went to trial, the state said. The 1986 decision in Batson v. Kentucky set up a system by which trial judges could evaluate claims of discrimination and the explanations by prosecutors that their actions were not based on race.
"This argument falls flat," Roberts wrote. He noted that the record shows "a concerted effort to keep black prospective jurors off the jury."
Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens declined to comment on the decision.
Foster's trial lawyers did not so much contest his guilt as try to explain it as a product of a troubled childhood, drug abuse and mental illness. They also raised objections about the exclusion of African-Americans from the jury. On that point, the judge accepted prosecutor Stephen Lanier's explanations that factors other than race drove his decisions. The jury convicted Foster and sentenced him to death.
The jury issue was revived 19 years later, in 2006, when the state turned over the prosecution's notes in response to a request under Georgia's Open Records Act.
The name of each potential black juror was highlighted on four different copies of the jury list and the word "black" was circled next to the race question on questionnaires for the black prospective jurors. Three of the prospective black jurors were identified in notes as "B#1," ''B#2," and "B#3."
An investigator working for the prosecutors also ranked the black prospective jurors against each other in case "it comes down to having to pick one of the black jurors."
Roberts noted that Lanier's reasons for excusing people from the jury changed over time. The chief justice also focused on an apparent different standard for prospective white and black jurors. One African-American man was excused in part because his wife worked at a local hospital, Roberts said. "But Lanier expressed no such concerns about white juror Blackmon, who had worked at the same hospital" and served on the jury, Roberts said.
Thomas objected to his colleagues' late intervention. "Foster's new evidence does not justify this court's reassessment of who was telling the truth nearly three decades removed from voir dire," Thomas wrote, using the term for jury selection.
Foster's case is the rare instance in which the prosecutors' files contained clear evidence of racial discrimination, Bright said. Still, he said, "Courts should know it might be there and be more vigilant in finding it."
The case is Foster v. Chatman, 14-8349.
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Associated Press writer Kate Brumback contributed to this report from Atlanta.
Published: Wed, May 25, 2016
