My effort to help with the SCOTUS docket problem
As noted here and here, one reason given for the Supreme Court’s shrinking docket is a purported lack of cert-worthy cases. As readers know, I think there are plenty of cert-worthy sentencing issues, especially in the wake of Blakely and Booker. And, ever eager to help out the Justices, I have been a part of a team that yesterday filed a petition in US v. Faulks, which concerns the procedures for revoking supervised release in a case with extraordinary facts. Here’s the pitch from the petition (which can be downloaded below):
In 1998, following a jury conviction, Judge Rebecca Beach Smith sentenced Celestine Faulks to the Guidelines-maximum term of 30 months in prison and five years’ supervised release. Seven years later, as Faulks’s term of supervision was nearing completion, a federal probation officer alleged that Faulks had committed a state crime in violation of a condition of her release. Faulks denied the allegation. At a revocation hearing under 18 U.S.C. § 3583, Judge Smith decided disputed questions of identity, actus reus, mens rea, and witness credibility using a civil standard of proof. Judge Smith found Faulks guilty of the alleged offense and sentenced her to a three-year term of imprisonment. This case presents two questions:
1. Whether a federal judge may, consistent with Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), and Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004), impose upon a former federal offender a new three-year term of imprisonment based solely on the judge’s disputed factual findings, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the former offender committed a state offense during her term of supervised release.
2. Whether proceedings in which federal judicial officials initiate, investigate, and adjudicate disputed allegations that a former federal offender has violated a condition of supervised release by committing a state offense violate the constitutional guarantees of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments as set forth in Apprendi, Blakely, and Mine Workers v. Bagwell, 512 U.S. 821 (1994).