SUPREME COURT NOTEBOOK

Judges can't give extra time for rehab WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court says judges cannot give convicts extra time in prison in hope it will be used to get them into rehabilitation services. The high court last Thursday unanimously ruled in favor of Alejandra Tapia, who was trying to reduce her 51 month sentence for alien smuggling, gun possession and bail jumping. She wanted a three-year sentence, but the judge said that a longer sentence would increase her chances of getting into a 500-hour prison drug rehabilitation program. Tapia was never placed in the program. Tapia says Congress has disapproved of judges using imprisonment as a method of rehabilitation. The lower courts disagreed. The case is Tapia v. United States, 10-5400. Court upholds Ala. man's conviction By Mark Sherman Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court last Thursday upheld the criminal conviction of an Alabama man even though the justices agreed the police search that produced incriminating evidence was illegal. The high court's 7-2 ruling against Willie Gene Davis highlighted an unusual series of events. Between Davis' arrest and a federal appeals court ruling affirming his conviction, the Supreme Court put new limits on the ability of police to search a vehicle immediately after a suspect is arrested. The question for the justices in this case was whether to invoke the exclusionary rule that generally requires evidence to be suppressed if it results from a violation of a suspect's Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches. In this case, the court said, the good-faith efforts of the officers overrode that concern. Justice Samuel Alito explained in his majority opinion that the court upheld the conviction because the purpose of the exclusionary rule is to deter police misconduct. Alito said that in a case where police followed the law as it existed when they conducted the search, "suppression would do nothing to deter police misconduct." In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer said it is unfair to Davis to acknowledge that the search violated his Fourth Amendment rights, but leave him without a remedy. Breyer borrowed from Shakespeare in writing that the decision "'keeps the word of promise to our ear, but 'breaks it to our hope." Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined Breyer's dissent. Davis initially was arrested for giving police a false name after the car in which he was riding was pulled over during a routine traffic stop. The driver also was arrested on drunken driving charges. With Davis and the driver handcuffed and placed in the back of separate police cruisers, police searched the car and found a revolver in the pocket of Davis' jacket. Davis already had a felony conviction on his record and was found guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm. He challenged the conviction on the basis of the search. While the appeal was pending with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Arizona v. Gant. The court said in that case that police need a warrant to search the vehicle of someone they have arrested if the person is locked up in a patrol cruiser and poses no safety threat to officers. Warrants are not needed when officers' safety may be in question or they are looking for evidence of the crime for which they have just made an arrest. The 11th Circuit upheld Davis' conviction anyway, and the high court followed suit last Thursday. Woman can challenge use of terrorism law By Jesse J. Holland Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court said last Thursday that a jilted woman can challenge the use of an anti-terrorism law to prosecute her for spreading deadly chemicals around the home of her husband's mistress. The high court, in a unanimous decision, said Carol Anne Bond can challenge her conviction despite arguments from federal prosecutors and judges that she shouldn't even be allowed to appeal the verdict that has left her in federal prison since 2007. Bond was convicted of trying to poison her husband's pregnant lover by spreading toxic chemicals around the woman's house and car and on her mailbox. Federal prosecutors then sent her to prison using a federal anti-terrorism law for using "chemical weapons." Bond, from Lansdale, Pa., almost 30 miles northwest of Philadelphia, challenged her conviction on 10th Amendment grounds, saying that the federal government's decision to charge her under a chemical weapons law was an unconstitutional reach into a state's power to handle what her lawyer calls a domestic dispute. But the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia threw out her appeal, saying that only states -- not individuals -- can use 10th Amendment arguments that the federal government cannot encroach into matters reserved for the states. The high court decision overturned that ruling, allowing her to go back and challenge use of the terrorism law. "The individual, in a proper case, can assert injury from governmental action taken in excess of the authority that federalism defines. Her rights in this regard do not belong to a state," said Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the opinion for the court. "It vindicates an individual's rights to challenge the federal government when it oversteps its powers," Goldman told The Associated Press. Bond, unable to bear any children of her own, was excited for her best friend Myrlina Haynes when the woman announced her pregnancy. But later the excitement turned to pain when Bond found out that her husband of more than 14 years, Clifford Bond, was the one who had impregnated Haynes. Vowing revenge, Bond, a laboratory technician, stole the chemical 10-chloro-10H phenoxarsine from the company where she worked and purchased potassium dichromate on Amazon.com. Both can be deadly if ingested or exposed to the skin at sufficiently high levels. Bond spread the chemicals on Haynes' door handle and in the tailpipe of Haynes' car. Haynes, noticing the chemicals and suffering a minor burn, called the local police, who didn't investigate to her satisfaction. She then found some of the chemicals on her mailbox, and called the United States Postal Service, which videotaped Bond going back and forth between Haynes' car and the mailbox with the chemicals. Postal inspectors arrested her. But instead of turning the domestic dispute case over to state prosecutors, a federal grand jury indicted her on two counts of possessing and using a chemical weapon using a federal anti-terrorism law passed to fulfill the United States' international treaty obligations under the 1993 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction. Bond pleaded guilty and was given six years in prison. The case is Bond v. United States, 09-1227. ---------- Associated Press Writer Maryclaire Dale contributed to this story. Class action against Bayer allowed to proceed WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court will let two West Virginia residents revive a lawsuit against Bayer AG over its anti-cholesterol drug Baycol, which was withdrawn from the market in 2001 after reports of a severe and sometimes fatal muscle disorder. The high court last Thursday unanimously agreed to let Kevin Smith and Shirley Sperlazza's class-action lawsuit against Bayer go forward. The 8th U.S. Court of Appeals had thrown out their lawsuit out after a federal judge overseeing multistate litigation against Bayer refused to let other West Virginians file a similar class-action lawsuit against the corporation. The high court said that decision was incorrect. The case is Smith v. Bayer Corp., 09-1205. Age must be considered in interrogation By Jesse J. Holland Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- A divided Supreme Court said last Thursday that police and courts must consider a child's age when examining whether a boy or girl is in custody, a move the court's liberals called "common sense" but the conservatives called an "extreme makeover" of Miranda rights. The 5-4 decision came in a case in which police obtained a confession from a seventh-grade special education student while questioning him at school about a rash of break-ins in Chapel Hill, N.C., without reading him his Miranda rights, telling him he could leave or call his relatives. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a former prosecutor who wrote the opinion, said police have to consider the child's age before talking to him or her about a crime. Courts also have to take the child's age into consideration when deciding whether that confession can be used in court, she said. "It is beyond dispute that children will often feel bound to submit to police questioning when an adult in the same circumstances would feel free to leave," Sotomayor said, adding there was no reason for "police officers or courts to blind themselves to that commonsense reality." But Justice Samuel Alito, also a former prosecutor, said the point of Miranda was that police would have clear, objective guidelines to follow. Opening the door to considering age likely will mean that other characteristics could soon be added to the list, such as educational level, I.Q. and cultural background, he said. "Safeguarding the constitutional rights of minors does not require the extreme makeover of Miranda that today's decision may portend," Alito said in the dissent. The special education student, known as JDB in court papers, was 13 in 2005 when he confessed while interviewed by police and school officials in a closed room at his school. JDB's lawyer challenged the use of his confessions, saying his client had not been read his Miranda warning. Previous court rulings have required Miranda warnings before police interrogations for people who are in custody, which is defined as when a reasonable person would think he cannot end the questioning and leave. The North Carolina Supreme Court refused to throw the confession out, saying courts cannot look at age when examining whether the boy thought he could leave. It also said the youth was never actually in custody since he had not been formally restrained and the door to the room was not guarded. The high court sent the case back to North Carolina for reconsideration, saying it would not decide the custody issue but the courts should take into account JDB's age. Sotomayor said it doesn't take college degrees or advanced training to know when police are dealing with an immature child. "They simply need the common sense to know that a 7-year-old is not a 13-year-old and neither is an adult," she said. Sotomayor was joined in her opinion by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy. Voting with Alito were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Groups like the American Bar Association and the Juvenile Law Center cheered the ruling. "Today's decision confirms that judges, law enforcement and other policymakers cannot disregard the age of children who come into contact with the justice system," said Marsha Levick, chief legal counsel of the Juvenile Law Center. "The court has conclusively, and repeatedly, held that children must be treated differently than adults." The case is J.D.B. v. North Carolina, 09-11121. Published: Mon, Jun 20, 2011