Supreme Court
January 27, 2012
California Supreme Court denies challenge of Senate maps
The California Supreme Court ruled today that state Senate maps drawn by a citizens commission will be used in this year's elections, despite a pending referendum to overturn them.
The issue came before the High Court after a Republican-backed group, Fairness and Accountability in Redistricting, filed more than 711,000 signatures with county elections offices in a referendum to overturn Senate maps drawn by a 14-member citizens commission.
Californians will decide the fate of the newly drawn Senate districts in November if 504,760 of the signatures are from valid voters. Legislative candidates must file and run their campaigns before then, however, so justices needed to identify district maps to be in effect immediately...
LINK - SacBee.com
October 3, 2011
National: GEO case before the Supreme Court
Douglas v. California Pharmacists Association, presents the issue of whether a claim for preemption can be brought directly under the Constitution in the absence of a statute authorizing such suits. If the Supreme Court finds that such suits cannot be brought, it will significantly lessen the ability to ensure state and local compliance with federal law. In Pollard v. GEO Group, Inc., the court will consider whether a cause of action exists to sue guards at private prisons for violating inmates’ constitutional rights...
LINK - ABAJournal.com
June 7, 2011
CDCR: 3-Judge Court Order Requiring Reduction in Prison Crowding
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) today submitted a report to the federal Three-Judge Court updating it on prison crowding reduction measures that the state has taken, or plans to take, in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on May 23, 2011. This decision requires California to reduce inmate crowding within its 33 adult institutions to 137.5 percent of design capacity within two years, or by May 24, 2013.
“California has already reduced its prison population significantly over the past several years. Today, we have the lowest crowding levels in California’s prisons since 1995,” said CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate. “Our goal is to meet the Court’s order by continuing to reduce prison crowding while still holding offenders accountable...
LINK - CDCRToday.BlogSpot.com
May 24, 2011
Q&A with CDCR’s Matt Cate on SCOTUS decision to reduce CA inmate population
Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that California must reduce prison overcrowding, potentially by releasing tens of thousands of inmates to correct the persistent violation of inmate rights. Soon after the ruling, some lawmakers and officials began predicting that chaos would overrun the streets as inmates were released en masse to comply with the ruling. The Prison Law Office’s Rebekah Evenson, who helped litigate the suit, disagreed:
What we have seen over the past years is that a number of high-level officials in California government and officials from states all over the country have demonstrated that there are many safe and effective ways to reduce prison populations without increasing crime. So we’re very hopeful that this is going to be taken as an opportunity to take this positive step forward to not just fix what’s wrong in California’s prisons but to start to address the public safety aspects as well...
LINK - KALWNews.org
May 24, 2011
Reaction to Supreme Court ruling on Calif prisons
Response from some California officials to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling Monday that the state must drastically reduce its prison population to relieve severe overcrowding.
- "As we work to carry out the Court's ruling, I will take all steps necessary to protect public safety." - Gov. Jerry Brown.
- "These offenders will be returning to our communities perhaps sooner than we'd planned." - Riverside County Supervisor John Tavaglione, president of the California State Association of Counties, urging state lawmakers to make sure counties have the money to provide public safety and rehabilitation services.
- "If we don't do it smart, we could have all those people come back for additional crimes. We may ultimately have to build more prisons anyway, but I don't think we want to get cornered into that box." - Chuck Alexander, executive vice president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association...
LINK - SacBee.com
May 23, 2011
US Supreme Court rules CA must reduce prison population by 37,000 - 46,000 inmates
A sharply divided Supreme Court Monday affirmed a controversial prisoner reduction plan forced on California prison administrators that requires the state to reduce its inmate population by tens-of-thousands to ease overcrowding.
The 5-4 decision authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, a California native, is a wholesale acceptance of a ruling by a special three-judge panel tasked with resolving chronic overcrowding in the state's penal system. The February 2009 decision orders California to reduce its prison population that has at times run nearly double its capacity. Approximately 37,000 to 46,000 inmates will have to be released in order for the state to comply with the ruling.
"After years of litigation, it became apparent that a remedy for the constitutional violations would not be effect give absent a reduction in the prison system population," Kennedy wrote in an opinion joined by the court's more liberal members. In an unusual occurrence, the opinion included an appendix showing three pictures of the overcrowded facilities...
LINK - FoxNews.com
May 23, 2011
LA Times - US Supreme Court rules CDCR must reduce prison population
The Supreme Court ordered California on Monday to release tens of thousands of its prisoners to relieve overcrowding, saying that "needless suffering and death" had resulted from putting too many inmates into facilities that cannot hold them in decent conditions.
It is one of the largest prison release orders in the nation's history, and it sharply split the high court.
Justices upheld an order from a three-judge panel in California that called for releasing 38,000 to 46,000 prisoners. Since then, the state has transferred about 9,000 state inmates to county jails. As a result, the total prison population is now about 32,000 more than the capacity limit set by the panel...
LINK - LATimes.com
September 9, 2010
Supreme Court Hears Oral Argument in Challenge to Furloughs
Attorneys for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger argued to the California Supreme Court yesterday that the governor did not exceed his authority when he furloughed state employees and used his veto power to further cut budget appropriations already reduced by the Legislature.
The governor’s lawyers rejected arguments challenging Schwarzenegger’s Dec. 19, 2008 executive order which unilaterally imposed mandatory two-day-a-month unpaid furlough. They also said that the governor’s line-item veto power applied to provisions in a mid-year emergency bill that reduced appropriation amounts of a previously enacted budget bill.
The high court heard the arguments in proceedings in San Francisco broadcast live on television and on the Internet by public affairs cable television network The California Channel...
LINK - MetNews.com
April 22, 2010
Supreme Court rejects Schwarzenegger furlough consolidation
The California Supreme Court has rejected Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's request that it take up seven key furlough lawsuits now in two appellate courts and freeze more than a dozen others in trial courts around the state. The decision ends the possibility for a relatively quick resolution to about two dozen furlough lawsuits in courts around the state.
The court posted the decision on its website this morning: "The application to transfer and consolidate appeals now pending in the Court of Appeal to this court is denied." Justice Joyce Kennard dissented.
Schwarzenegger is embroiled in 25 active lawsuits in various stages of litigation in courts from Sacramento to Los Angeles. On Mar. 2, his attorneys asked the state's high court to consolidate and review seven cases related to the governor's furlough authority, including a three Alameda Superior Court decisions on "special fund" workers that the administration lost and has appealed...
LINK - SacBee.com
January 19, 2010
Governor claims victory over 3-judge panel with stay from US Supreme Court
01/19/2010 GAAS:43:10 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Statement by Gov. Schwarzenegger's Legal Affairs Secretary Andrea Lynn Hoch on U.S. Supreme Court Decision
Governor Schwarzenegger's Legal Affairs Secretary Andrea Lynn Hoch today issued the following statement on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision:
"The U.S. Supreme Court's decision today is a win for the state because it guarantees there will be no early release of prisoners while the Three-Judge Panel's latest order is appealed. Given the more recent January 12 order by the Three-Judge Panel, it is no surprise that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to wait and consider the entire case upon our appeal, which we will file today. We fully expect the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Three-Judge Panel's prisoner release order."
September 14, 2009
U.S. Supreme Court expected to take California prisons case
The U.S. Supreme Court has all but said it will accept jurisdiction of the legal battle over whether California's overcrowded prisons are the primary cause of unconstitutional medical care for inmates, but only after a three-judge lower court has issued its final order on the issue.
In a brief ruling late Friday, the high court denied the state's request for a stay pending its appeal to the Supreme Court of the three judges' mandate that the state reduce the population of its 33 adult prisons by 46,000 within two years.
The panel's Aug. 4 order gave Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his corrections chief, Matthew Cate, until Friday to submit a detailed plan on how the population cut will be carried out. The judges said that once they issue their order approving the mechanisms of the reduction, they will be willing to stay their implementation pending any appeal to the Supreme Court. But the judges denied the state's request of a stay of this Friday's deadline pending an appeal now. The state then sought a stay from the high court….
LINK - SacBee.com
September 4, 2009
California takes prison-overcrowding fight to U.S. Supreme Court
California officials today asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block a lower court order that forces the state to quickly devise a plan to shed more than 40,000 inmates from its overcrowded prisons.
In a 46-page petition to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who handles emergency appeals from the Western states, California Attorney General Jerry Brown asked for an immediate stay of a three-judge panel's Aug. 4 order requiring the state to submit its prisoner release plan within 45 days.
Judges on the federal court panel Thursday rejected the state's bid for a stay, saying they've been "more than patient with the state and its officials" in the years-long legal battle over conditions inside California's prison system…
LINK - ContraCostaTimes.com
April 21, 2008
Court rejects appeals by 11 death row inmates
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Monday followed up on its ruling last week upholding the commonly used lethal injection method of execution and rejected appeals by 11 death row inmates in seven states.
The ruling cleared the way for a resumption of executions that had been halted for nearly seven months while the justices considered a constitutional challenge to the three-drug cocktail used in the executions.
The ruling means more than a dozen death row inmates likely will get early execution dates. Officials in the leading death penalty states, like Texas, Virginia and Florida, said they planned to schedule executions that previously had been on hold…
LINK - Reuters.com
April 16, 2008
Supreme Court upholds use of lethal injections
The Supreme Court upheld the most common method of lethal injections executions Wednesday, clearing the way for states to resume executions that have been on hold for nearly 7 months.
The justices, by a 7-2 vote, turned back a constitutional challenge to the procedures in place in Kentucky, which uses three drugs to sedate, paralyze and kill inmates. Similar methods are used by roughly three dozen states.
The governor of Virginia lifted his state's moratorium on executions two hours after the high court issued its ruling…
LINK - SacBee.com (The Sacramento Bee)
March 25, 2008
US court questions legality of lethal injections
Capital punishment is back in the headlines in the United States, as the Supreme Court prepares to hand down a crucial ruling on the legality of lethal injections.
[…]
The Supreme Court is currently considering whether prisoners suffer pain during the lethal injection process. A growing number of doctors believe inmates do. Mr Givens had no medical training and yet he was expected to insert needles, mix drugs and perform complicated procedures. If a mistake is made, the inmate could be tortured to death…
LINK - ABC News
