Five opinions came down today from the United States Supreme Court. Read the summaries below and read the full text of the opinions at Justia’s U.S. Supreme Court Center.
Alleyne v. United States, United States Supreme Court (6/17/13)
Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law
Alleyne was convicted using or carrying a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, 18 U.S.C. 924(c)(1)(A), which carries a five-year mandatory minimum sentence. The sentences increases to a seven-year minimum if the firearm is brandished, 924(c)(1)(A)(ii), and to a 10-year minimum if it is discharged, 924(c)(1)(A)(iii). The jury form indicated that Alleyne had “[u]sed or carried a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence,” but not that the firearm was “[b]randished.” Alleyne objected to a sentencing report recommendation of a seven-year term, arguing that the jury did not find brandishing beyond a reasonable doubt and that raising his mandatory minimum sentence based on a judge’s finding of brandishing would violate his Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. The district court overruled the objection. The Fourth Circuit affirmed.
The Supreme Court vacated and remanded, overruling Harris v. United States, 536 U.S. 545 and applying Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466. Mandatory minimum sentences increase the penalty for a crime and any fact that increases the mandatory minimum is an “element” that must be submitted to the jury. Defining facts that increase a mandatory minimum as part of the substantive offense enables a defendant to predict the applicable penalty from the face of the indictment and preserves the jury’s role as intermediary between the state and criminal defendants. Because the fact of brandishing aggravates the prescribed range of allowable sentences, it constitutes an element of a separate, aggravated offense that must be found by the jury, regardless of what sentence the defendant might have received had a different range been applicable. The Court noted that its ruling does not mean that any fact that influences judicial discretion must be found by a jury.
Read more: Supreme Court says jury should have final say on facts that trigger mandatory minimums
Myriad obtained patents after discovering the precise location and sequence of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, mutations of which can dramatically increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. The discovery enabled Myriad to develop medical tests for detecting mutations for assessing cancer risk. Myriad’s patents would give it the exclusive rights to isolate an individual’s BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes and to synthetically create BRCA composite DNA. The district court entered summary judgment, finding the patents invalid under 35 U.S.C. 101 because they covered products of nature. On remand following the Supreme Court’s decision, Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs, Inc., the Federal Circuit found both isolated DNA and composite DNA patent-eligible. The Supreme Court affirmed in part and reversed in part, noting that the case did not involve “method claims” for new applications of knowledge about the genes or the patentability of DNA in which the order of the naturally occurring nucleotides has been altered. A naturally-occurring DNA segment is not patent-eligible merely because it has been isolated, but composite DNA is patent-eligible because it is not naturally-occurring. Myriad did not create or alter the genetic information encoded in the genes or the genetic structure of the DNA. Even brilliant discovery does not alone satisfy the section 101 inquiry. Myriad’s claims are not saved by the fact that isolating DNA from the human genome severs chemical bonds that bind gene molecules together. The claims are not expressed in terms of chemical composition, nor do they rely on the chemical changes resulting from the isolation of a particular DNA section. Composite DNA, however, is not a “product of nature;” a lab technician unquestionably creates something new when introns are removed from a DNA sequence to make composite DNA.
A lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming alleged that the plane of Amelia Earhart had been located. Plaintiff Timothy Mellon stated in his 
Maryland v King
Back in January, key provisions of FISA – the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – were renewed by Congress. I wrote about the troubling situation of 
California is proposing to charge citizens to access and read court files and other public documents. The
President Obama 
Tennis Channel, a sports programming network and intervenor in this suit, filed a complaint against Comcast Cable, a multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD), alleging that Comcast violated section 616 of the Communications Act of 1934, 47 U.S.C. 536(a)(3), and the Commission’s regulations by refusing to broadcast Tennis as widely as it did its own affiliated sports programming networks, Golf Channel and Versus. An ALJ ruled against Comcast, ordering that it provide Tennis carriage equal to what it afforded Golf and Versus, and the Commission affirmed. The court concluded that Comcast prevailed with its third set of arguments on appeal, that even under the Commission’s interpretation of section 616, the Commission had failed to identify adequate evidence of unlawful discrimination. The Commission had nothing to refute Comcast’s contention that its rejection of Tennis’s proposal was simply “a straight up financial analysis.” Accordingly, the court granted the petition.
Henderson was stabbed to death after leaving a party with Perkins and Jones. Perkins was charged with murder. Jones testified that Perkins alone committed the murder while Jones watched. Perkins testified that Jones and Henderson left him during the evening, and that he later saw Jones with blood on his clothing. Perkins was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 gives a state prisoner one year to file a federal habeas corpus petition, 28 U. S. C. 244(d)(1)(A). If the petition alleges newly-discovered evidence, the filing deadline is one year from “the date on which the factual predicate of the claim … could have been discovered through … due diligence.” More than 11 years after his conviction became final in 1997, Perkins filed his federal habeas petition, alleging ineffective assistance of trial counsel. To overcome AEDPA’s time limitations, he asserted newly discovered evidence of actual innocence in the form of three affidavits, the most recent dated July 16, 2002, each pointing to Jones as the murderer. The district court found that, even if the affidavits could be characterized as evidence newly discovered, Perkins had failed to show diligence entitling him to equitable tolling of AEDPA’s limitations period, and, alternatively, that Perkins had not shown that, taking account of all the evidence, no reasonable juror would have convicted him. The Sixth Circuit reversed, holding that Perkins’ actual-innocence claim allowed him to present his ineffective-assistance claim as if it had been filed on time. The Supreme Court vacated and remanded. A federal habeas court, faced with an actual-innocence gateway claim, should count unjustifiable delay on a habeas petitioner’s part, not as an absolute barrier to relief, but as a factor in determining whether actual innocence has been reliably shown. A petitioner invoking the miscarriage of justice exception must show that it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have convicted him in light of the new evidence.” Unexplained delay in presenting new evidence bears on the determination whether the petitioner has made the requisite showing. The district court’s appraisal of Perkins’ petition as insufficient to meet the demanding Schlup standard for actual innocence should be dispositive, absent cause to upset that evaluation.