Latest SCOTUS order list with notable Second, Fourth and Eighth Amendment developments

The Surpreme Court handed down this new order list this morning to kick off what should be an eventful SCOTUS month.  The list is not all that eventful for sentencing fans, but at least one grant, one denial and one non-decision seem worth flagging.

The Court this morning granted review in four new cases, and the one criminal law grant concerns a Fourth Amendment issue in Case v. Montana, 24-624.  Here is question presented from the cert petition in Case: “Whether law enforcement may enter a home without a search warrant based on less than probable cause that an emergency is occurring, or whether the emergency-aid exception requires probable cause.”  (A criminal-law adjcent case The GEO Group, Inc. v. Menocal, 24-758, involves a private prison tort suit, though the issue for SCOTUS is whether an order denying a government contractor’s claim of derivative sovereign immunity is immediately appealable.)

The Court denied cert in a lot of cases, and the one sure to get a lot of attention (and in part because it generated separate opinions) is Snope v. Brown, 24-203, concerning Maryland’s criminal prohibition of the AR-15 rifle.  Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch all indicated they wished to grant cert on the Second Amendment case, but no other Justice provided the needed fourth vote for cert.  Justice Kavanaugh authored a short separate statement that did not really say much, and left me unsure why he was not that fourth vote.

And the Court decided again not to decide Hamm v. Smith, 24-872, a long-running case concerning how Alabama (and the Eleventh Circuit) applied the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition the execution of persons who are intellectually disabled.  Folks may recall that this case was before the Court in recent years (prodicing more than 20 relists) before it was punted back to the Eleventh Circuit.  The case is back with Alabama appealing again, but now with some notable support as explained by John Elwood in his most resent Relist Watch post at SCOTUSblog:

The United States filed a rare (or at least previously rare) unsolicited cert-stage amicus brief supporting Alabama, arguing the court should take the case to clarify that states may require a threshold IQ finding before turning to adaptive deficits.  The government also asks the court to grant review to provide guidance on how multiple IQ scores should be evaluated in the aggregate – a surprisingly uncharted area two decades post-Atkins.  Nineteen states have also filed an amicus brief supporting Alabama.  Expect a decision soon on whether this becomes Atkins’ next chapter – a grant seems reasonably likely.

I share John’s view that we are likely to get a cert grant in Hamm, though it did not come today.