Still no sentencing from SCOTUS

The always helpful SCOTUSblog has the news on today’s rulings from the Supreme Court, though it appears again that there is no sentencing action within today’s three opinions and one cert grant.  Criminal justice fans will, however, want to check out the Court’s only major Fourth Amendment case that was handed out today.  Here’s the early SCOTUSblog report:

[T]he Court ruled in Brendlin v. California (06-8120) that a passenger in a car stopped on the road by a police officer has a right to challenge the legality of the stop, under the Fourth Amendment. The Court was unanimous, with Justice David H. Souter writing.

I believe the next decision day is this Thursday (June 21), and the Justices have only about a dozen cases left to resolve.  By Thursday, my own personal Rita-meter might indicate that the odds of a ruling are now getting very high, although one never knows.  (I have some more speculations about what might be going on in Rita, which I’ll share in the days ahead.)

UPDATE:  Lyle Denniston’s fuller report on today’s SCOTUS action now notes these two notable cert denials in capital cases:

Among cases denied review on Monday was Barbour v. Allen (06-10605), a case testing whether a state has a constitutional duty to provide legal aid to poor inmates on death row, to help them challenge convictions and sentences in state court after the verdict is final….

The Court also declined to return — for the ninth time — to a review of the death penalty procedures that Texas actually stopped using in 1991. The case was Quarterman v. Nelson (06-1254), in which the Fifth Circuit Court essentially cast aside much of its modern jurisprudence on the role that mitigating evidence must be allowed to have in capital sentencing proceedings.