SUPREME COURT NOTEBOOK

Court won't help either side in fight over Navy plane By Jesse J. Holland Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court refused on Monday to take sides in a long-running billion-dollar dispute between two defense contractors and the government over a cancelled contract for a Navy plane. The high court unanimously threw out court decisions that would have helped both the federal government and Boeing Co. and General Dynamics, the companies that were supposed to build 850 A-12 Avenger attack planes for the military. "Neither side will be entirely happy with the resolution," said Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the opinion for the unanimous court. The A-12 Avenger attack plane was canceled by the Pentagon in 1991 based on claims that the companies failed to meet the terms of the contract. The A-12, designed with stealth technology to help it evade radar, was more than 18 months behind schedule and at least $1 billion over budget when it was canceled. The government and the contractors disagreed over who was responsible for the delays and cost overruns. For the past 20 years, the government has been demanding repayment of money spent on the plane's development and the companies have been resisting, filing a lawsuit in federal court to block the Pentagon from collecting. But the government asked for the lawsuit to be thrown out because classified secrets were being leaked during the discovery process. The Supreme Court was being asked to settle the issue of whether the government's refusal to turn over classified information, thus preventing the companies from defending themselves, should bar the government from recovering the money. The state-secrets privilege, on which the government relied to shut down the companies' lawsuit, typically arises in national security and terrorism cases. Invoking the privilege, which the Supreme Court ratified in the 1950s, the government tells a court that allowing a case to go forward would force the disclosure of information that could damage national security. The court agreed that the litigation could not go forward if state secrets were going to be spilled, but also that the government could not use a defense that included classified information. The justices decided the best thing to do is to send both sides back to where they were when the case started. "The traditional course is to leave the parties where they stood when they knocked on the courthouse door," Scalia said. That basically means Boeing Co. and General Dynamics don't immediately have to repay the government $1.35 billion, plus more than $2.5 billion in accumulated interest, after the Pentagon declared the companies in default on the contract of the canceled attack plane. But it also means that companies won't immediately get $1.2 billion awarded to them by the Court of Federal Claims when it decided the government's termination for default instead was a termination for convenience. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had already thrown out that award, but the companies were hoping to get it reinstated by the Supreme Court. Boeing called it a victory. "It has always been our view that the default termination was improper," said J. Michael Luttig, Boeing executive vice president and general counsel. The high court sent the case back to the lower courts to see if other issues involving the contract can be resolved in court. The consolidated cases are General Dynamics v. U.S., 09-1298, and Boeing v. U.S., 09-1302. High court to Calif: Cut prison inmates by 30,000 By Mark Sherman Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Monday narrowly endorsed reducing California's cramped prison population by more than 30,000 inmates to fix sometimes deadly problems in medical care, ruling that federal judges retain enormous power to oversee troubled state prisons. The court said in a 5-4 decision that the reduction is "required by the Constitution" to correct longstanding violations of inmates' rights to adequate care for their mental and physical health. In 2009, the state's prisons averaged nearly a death a week that might have been prevented or delayed with better medical care. The order mandates a prison population of no more than 110,000 inmates, still far above the 80,000 the system was designed to hold. There were more than 143,000 inmates in California's 33 adult prisons as of May 11, so roughly 33,000 inmates will need to be transferred to other jurisdictions or released. "The violations have persisted for years. They remain uncorrected," Justice Anthony Kennedy, a California native, wrote for the court. The lawsuit challenging the adequacy of mental health care was filed in 1990. To emphasize the conditions, Kennedy took the unusual step of including photos of overcrowding, including cages where mentally ill inmates were held while they awaited a bed. The court's four Democratic appointees joined with Kennedy in upholding a court order issued by three federal judges in California, all appointees of President Jimmy Carter. Justice Antonin Scalia said in dissent that the court order is "perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation's history" and that it did not comply with the Prison Litigation Reform Act, a 15-year-old law intended to limit the discretion of judges in lawsuits over prison conditions. Scalia, reading his dissent aloud Monday, said it would require the release of "the staggering number of 46,000 convicted felons." Scalia's number, cited in legal filings, comes from a period in which the prison population was even higher. Justice Clarence Thomas joined Scalia's opinion, while Justice Samuel Alito wrote a separate dissent for himself and Chief Justice John Roberts. Michael Bien, one of the lawyers representing inmates in the case, said, "The Supreme Court upheld an extraordinary remedy because conditions were so terrible." The ruling comes amid efforts in many states, accelerated by budget gaps, to send fewer people to prison in the first place. Proposals vary by state, but include ways to reduce sentences for lower-level offenders, direct some offenders to alternative sentencing programs and give judges more discretion in sentencing. "There's a growing consensus that there are better ways to run criminal justice systems," said Michael Mushlin, an expert on prisoners' rights at Pace Law School in White Plains, N.Y. Eighteen other states joined California in urging the justices to reject the population order as overreaching. They argued that it poses a threat to public safety. State attorneys general said they could face similar legal challenges. Alito said he, too, feared that the decision, "like prior prisoner release orders, will lead to a grim roster of victims. I hope that I am wrong. In a few years, we will see." Kennedy acknowledged the concern, but said the judges gave state officials flexibility in complying with the court order, including offering "early release only to those prisoners who pose the least risk of reoffending." California Gov. Jerry Brown said he "will take all steps necessary to protect public safety." The California dispute is the first high court case that reviewed a prisoner release order under the 1996 federal law, which also made it much harder for inmates to challenge prison conditions. The state has protested a court order to cut the population to around 110,000 inmates within two years, but also has taken steps to meet, if not exceed, that target. Kennedy said the state also could ask the lower court for more time to reach the goal. Earlier this year, Brown signed a bill that would reduce the prison population by about 40,000 inmates by transferring many low-level offenders to county jurisdiction. The state legislature has yet to authorize any money for the transfer. A person appointed by federal judges now oversees prison medical operations, but the judges have said the key to improving health care is to reduce the number of inmates. At the peak of the overcrowding, nearly 20,000 inmates were living in makeshift housing in gymnasiums and other common areas, often sleeping in bunks stacked three high. Another 10,000 inmates were in firefighting camps or private lockups within California. In 2006, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used his emergency powers to begin shipping inmates to private prisons in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma. More than 10,000 California inmates are now housed in private prisons out of state. Schwarzenegger also sought to reduce the inmate population by signing legislation that increased early release credits and made it more difficult to send ex-convicts back to prison for parole violations. Another law rewards county probation departments for keeping criminals out of state prisons. One result of those changes is that the state has been able to do away with nearly two-thirds of its makeshift beds, although more than 7,000 inmates remain in temporary housing. ---------------- Associated Press writer Don Thompson in Sacramento, Calif., contributed to this report. Justices reject Guantanamo detainees' appeal WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has turned down an appeal from Guantanamo detainees who fear they may be tortured or jailed if they are released from the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The justices on Monday rejected a plea from dozens of detainees who say they should have 30 days advance notice to challenge their transfer to countries where they have a reasonable fear of torture, or even continued confinement. Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor voted to hear the appeal, two votes shy of what was needed. Justice Elena Kagan sat out because she worked on the case as a Justice Department lawyer. The government says it has a policy not to send detainees anywhere they are likely to be tortured. Courts have ruled that the government's word is sufficient. The case initially included Canadian Omar Khadr, but he has since pleaded guilty to war crimes and been sentenced to eight years in prison. Published: Wed, May 25, 2011