Good morning, everyone! Welcome to our special-edition Thursday live blog.
We are expecting opinions in argued cases at 10 am.
So, just to get this out of the way, we are NOT expecting any orders on, to name a few, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Peruta v. California, Sessions v. Binderup, or the travel ban.
Orders from today's conference will come on Monday morning.
The five minute buzzer has already sounded. Two boxes this morning.
Amy is getting in line for opinions now.
The first opinion is Maslenjak v. US, by Justice Kagan. Vacated and remanded.
The court holds that the government must establish an illegal act by the defendant played some role in her acquisition of citizenship. Whenn the illegal act is a false statement, that means the government must demonstrate that the defendant lied about facts that would have mattered to an immigration official, b/c they would have justified denying naturalization or would predictably have led to other facts.
This was a case in which a Bosnian Serb came to the US as a refugee, fleeing ethnic strife in the former Yugoslavia.
Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor joined the opinion in full.
Gorsuch filed an opinion concurring in part and in the judgment, joined by Thomas.
Alito filed an opinion concurring in the judgment.
In this case, Maslenjak had said (among other things) that her family feared persecution from Muslims and that they might be abused b/c her husband had evaded service in the army. But it turned out that he had served in a brigade that participated in an infamous massacre.
Headed in for next opoinion.
Breyer has the next opinion, in Turner v. US.
The decision of the D.C. Court of Appeals is affirmed. This was a case in which several men were convicted of a brutal murder, but later discovered that the government had failed to disclose evidence to the defense.
The Supreme Court had asked the parties to brief whether the convictions should be set aside under Brady v. Maryland.
Today Breyer writes that the question before the court was whether the withheld evidence was material under Brady, which would mean that the convictions could not stand. But the D.C. courts had ruled that the evidence was not material, and Breyer writes, "we reach the same conclusion as the lower courts.'
Breyer's opinion is joined by Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito, and (somewhat surprisingly to me) Sotomayor.
Kagan dissents, joined by Ginsburg.
Gorsuch did not participate.
The next and final decision is from Kennedy, in Weaver v. Massachusetts.
The decision of the Massachusetts court is affirmed.
This was a case in which the supporters of a teenager charged with murder were denied admission to the courtroom.
But the defendant's lawyer did not object to the closure of the courtroom at trial or on direct appeal.
The justices will be back tomorrow morning with more opinions.
Apologies for the delay in sending a link to Maslenjak-- the Supreme Court website seems to be having some technical difficulties
The court rules that, although the right to a public trial is important, "in some cases an unlawful closure might take place and yet the trial still will be fundamentally fair from the defendant's standpoint."
This appears to be one of these cases, b/c Weaver had not shown a "reasonable probability of a different outcome but for counsel's failure to object, and he had not shown that counsel's shortcomings led to a fundamentally unfair trial. He is not entitled to a new trial."
We are done with opinions for today.
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