I would be remiss if I didn't mention something about Connick v. Thompson, a case to be argued before the Supreme Court today.
I didn't include it in the Pending Supreme Court Cases page because it is only tangentially related to criminal law and will have no effect on habeas cases.
Nonetheless, there are criminal law aspects to it, so I thought I would at least talk about it.
At its core, the case concerns a wrongful conviction from over 20 years. The defendant filed a civil case against the DA's office, arguing that the office's failure to adequately train its prosecutors on their Brady violations entitled him to relief. The question before the Supreme Court is whether a claim can be stated where there has only been on Brady violation as a result of the lack of training.
It's definitely interesting, and it's criminal law-related, but it won't have a direct effect on the development of criminal law or habeas law. I guess in a back door way it could. If the Court says that this states a claim, it will increase the amount of Brady training. Vice versa, if the Court says that it doesn't, then it may decrease the amount of training, as the DA Offices may just decide to risk it and not train their prosecutors, knowing that the odds of civil liability will only occur if there are multiple violations.
One other thing to note about the case, I guess that a book has been written about the underlying criminal case. It's called, Killing Time: An 18-Year Odyssey from Death Row to Freedom, written by John Hollway and Ronald Gaultier. SCOTUSblog notes that Hollway has an article on Slate about the case (I haven't read it yet).
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