Scotus News
By Amy Howe
20 Mar 2025
11:43
The judges are likely to hear Barrett against the United States In the fall. (Katie Barlow)
The Supreme Court has utilized a former clerk of Justice Sonia Sotomayor to defend a lower court decision in the next term Barrett against the US, A man in New York’s challenge to his robbery -transmitting and judgments according to two federal laws. The federal government, which prevailed in the lower law last May, has refused to defend this decision by the Supreme Court.
The judges appointed Charles L. McCloud to map and argue for the case. Dwayne Barrett, who was involved in a series of armed robberies, claims that the constitution’s double at risk forbids him from receiving two separate judgments – one for violating a federal law that makes it a crime to use a gun during a crime of violence and another for murder or killing during a robbery.
When a Federal Appeals Court rejected his argument, Barrett came to the Supreme Court, who agreed on March 3 to take up his case.
The federal government had called on the judges to deny Barrett’s petition for review and emphasized that Barrett had not yet become angry. Even if the introduction of the two judgments violates the double Jeopardy clause, the government explained that either the “thing could structure” its verdict or the government may ask to have one of the charges that were rejected, which would “avoid any constitutional violation or give it harmless.” But the government acknowledged that it had long taken the attitude that cumulative punishment “as the kind mentioned in Barrett’s case” is not allowed. “
When the government chose not to defend the 2nd Circuit’s decision, the judges appointed McCloud on Wednesday to do so. The practice of appointing an external lawyer is not an uncommon practice, although the judges have appointed a particularly high number of-six-to-period 2024-25.
McCloud is a partner at Williams & Connolly, a law firm in Washington, DC, before he was the clerk of Sotomayor, and was the officer of then Judge Brett Kavanaugh at the US Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit and to Judge Paul Niemeyer of the US Appeals of the 4th Circuit. He served as an assistant to the US lawyer from January 2023 until the summer of 2024 and argued for two cases in the Supreme Court.
Barrett’s case will be argued sometime in the fall.
This article was originally published on Howe on the field.
