Today’s SCOTUS action

The fine folks at SCOTUS blog have all the highlights on today’s work by the Supreme Court.  The one sentencing opinion of note is a per curiam reversal in Bell v. Cone, 04-294 (S. Ct. Jan. 24, 2005) of a grant of habeas by the Sixth Circuit in a Tennessee capital case.  The opinion for the Court (which includes an interesting Ring footnote) is available here, and a one-page clarifying concurrence by Justice Ginsburg (joined by Justices Souter and Breyer) is here.  (The Court per curiam also dismissed a writ of certiorari as improvidently granted in the capital case of Howell v. Mississippi (available here).)

In addition, as detailed here by SCOTUS blog, in “87 pages of orders, the Court summarily disposed of nearly 450 cases that had been held for the ruling on the constitutionality of the federal Sentencing Guideline. Lower courts were told to look again at the cases in light of the Court’s ruling in the Booker/Fanfan cases.”  And, as detailed here, “the Court dismissed the Sentencing Guidelines question certified by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in No. 04-59, U.S. v. Penaranda.”

Finally, according to this post, it seems the Supreme Court will not be issuing any more opinions for nearly a month.  Thus, it will be late February, at the earliest, before we see a decision in Roper v. Simmons, the juvenile death penalty case, or Shepard v. US, the criminal history case.