Some notes on the Supreme Court's upcoming October 28 conference.
Four of the five habeas cases that had previously been relisted were officially relisted again and will be considered at the conference. Those are Cavazos, Dixon, Cross, and Buck. I am guessing that, because the Court had ordered the record in Maxwell, it was not officially relisted for this conference. But it will be eventually.
In addition, according to the most recent SCOTUSblog relist post, a front-end criminal case was also relisted. It's a capital case called Medina v. Texas. It's an odd one. SCOTUSblog explains:
In it, he argues that he was deprived of his rights to due process, a meaningful opportunity to be heard, a fair opportunity to present a defense, a fundamentally fair trial, right to counsel, and right to a reliable and individualized capital sentencing in violation of the Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. One of the main issues is the prejudice caused to Medina, who was charged with killing his two children, by a number of court-ordered delays because of jury conflicts (including, supposedly, induced labor and fishing (!) during the punishment phase of his trial). Medina argues that those delays, coupled with other errors, ultimately prevented a number of witnesses from Medina’s native El Salvador from testifying on his behalf. The relist is slightly unusual because the Court scheduled Medina for the November 4 (rather than October 28) Conference, perhaps because the record (which the Court requested back on October 6) arrived at One First Street the same day the petition was on for the October 14 Conference.
So, I guess, on second thought, it's not entirely relevant to the October 28 conference. But this seems like the right post to put it in.
Finally, on their petitions to watch page, SCOTUSblog mentions a petition in a habeas case to watch, on for its second conference. It's Wetzel v. Lambert and here's the issue (from SCOTUSblog): Did the Third Circuit fail to properly apply the habeas deference standard to the state court's rejection of respondent's Brady claim?
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