Relate watch
By John Elwood
20 Mar 2025
At. 14.34
Relist Watch -Column is investigating certificate petitions that the Supreme Court has “relatively” for its upcoming conference. A brief explanation of relists is available here.
The Supreme Court hits its step in sorting through the relatists. At its last conference, the review of a one-time relist who asked if federal courts should follow the state legislation requiring medical malpractice claims to be supported by an expert requirement. The court also agreed to take a twice-relative challenge to Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy.” And because the solution of this case can have wider consequences for the states ‘ability to regulate the professionals’ speech, the court is now holding two two-relieved cases raising first change challenges to state business licensing legislation.
But the court refused last week in a case that tried to invalidate the burden-changing framework that has long controlled cases of discrimination against employment. As is often the case when the court denies review in cases that have been repeatedly reinstated, this time led to the denial of Dissens, this time from justice Clarence Thomas, along with Justice Neil Gorsuch. Thomas wrote that decisions in a lower right reflect “widespread misunderstandings” about the burden-changing framework and that its use “produces troubled results on Earth.”
The court also denied the decision of Alabama and 18 other states to bring a case against California and four other states directly in the Supreme Court to block a number of lawsuits against fossil fuel producers and said these cases that are immensely tried to “dictate interstate energy policy through the aggressive use of state torture.” Thomas dissented again, along with justice Samuel Alito, and repeated their often stated perception that “the court’s assumption that it has the discretion to reject review in suits between states is at best suspected.”
This week’s only new relist is not really a new relist. In fact, it makes its third performance in this column. It is an unusual criminal petition, as the prosecution also believes that the accused conviction should be reversed.
Areli Escobar was sentenced in a Texas State Court for the sexual assault and murder of Biana Maldonado Hernandez and sentenced to death. Escobar’s defense later revealed that the DNA proofs used in the case were compromised due to serious forensic mismatch at the Austin Police Department’s Lab. After the Texas Forensic Science Commission’s revision led to the Laboratory’s shutdown, Escobar submitted another Habeas, referring to the use of unreliable, misleading and false DNA proofs in violation of Napue v. Illinois. The court’s court recommended to leave the conviction due to a “reasonable probability” that the defective DNA certificates affected the jury’s decision.
But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals – the State’s Highest Court of Criminal Cases – rejected the court’s conclusions and insisted that the revised DNA analysis still pointed to Escobar’s guilt and cited other imposing evidence, such as Escobar’s bloody fingerprints and inconsistent alibi. Meanwhile, the newly elected Travis County District Attorney, who campaigned against the death penalty, mistake and joined Escobar’s call for a new trial.
On Escobar’s first trip to the Supreme Court, the court of criminal appealed the denial of relief after conviction and is postponed for the case for reconsideration in the light of the state’s confession of the error-one action known as a “GVR.”
But by custody, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused relief again and explained that the state’s attitude towards Certiorari ”adds[s] nothing to what we were already aware of when we [previously] denied relief. “It still concluded that Escobar could not show a violation of his right to fair treatment and procedures, and that the” proof that has proven to be false is not essential because there is no reasonable probability that the result would have changed if the false evidence had been replaced with accurate evidence. “
This time, Escobar argues in the Supreme Court that the Texas Court of Court only gave lip service to Justices’s GVR approval and argued that the lower rather frustrated state’s ability to explain why it would no longer defend the conviction by limiting supplementary briefing. And Escobar claims that, unlike the State Law’s conclusion, the use of the false DNA at the trial at trial violated his right to fair treatment and procedures because it was essential for the guilty sentence. Escobar is supported by “Friend of the Court” Briefs filed by the American Bar Association and former State Attorneys and other prosecutors. And once again, José Garza, Travis County District Attorney, has filed a brief support for the petition. But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who represents the Correctional Institutions Department of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, has filed an unusual “friend of the court” briefly opposite relief and argued that the case is “factual, procedurally defective and Texas-law-focused.”
When the case arrived at the Supreme Court, Escobar claimed that his case ”presents the same question as Glossip v. Oklahoma“As the court had decided to review and then was in the briefing process. Escobar claimed it as in Glossip (where the state also confessed error), “proper law process requires reversing[] Where a capital transition is so infected with mistakes that the state is no longer trying to defend it. “The court reintroduced Escobar Back in June 2024 and has kept it ever since pending the solution of Glossip.
Supreme Court gave benefit to Richard Glossip at the end of February and claimed that the prosecution who violated his constitutional obligation during Napue to correct false testimony. The judges sent the case back to the state courts for further evidence negotiations to determine whether the prosecution’s failure to correct the false testimony could have contributed to the judge.
The court requested and then received the record from Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Escobar’s case. Relatist this week suggests that the judges still need time to find out what to do here.
New relatists
Escobar v. Texas23-934
Problems: (1) Whether proper legislative process requires reversal where a capital transition is so infected with errors that the state no longer tries to defend it; (2) Whether Texas Court of Criminal Appeals made a mistake of holding, there was no violation of the proper process because there is no “reasonable probability” that the prosecutor’s use of admittedly false, misleading and unreliable DNA certificate to ensure the contractor’s capital transition could have affected any juror’s judgment.
(Reviewed after conferences 30 May 2024 and Mar 7. 2025.)
Returning relatists
Apache Stronghold Against the United States24-291
Question: Whether the government “significantly burdens” religious exercise under the law of restoration of religious freedom or must satisfy increased control during the free training clause in the first amendment when it pronounces a sacred place of completely physical destruction, ending specific religious rituals forever.
.
Ocean State Tactical, LLC against Rhode Island24-131
Problems: (1) About a retrospective and confiscative ban on possession of ammunition feeding units in general use violates the second amendment; and (2) about a law that abolishes citizens without compensation of property that they legally acquired and long occupied without incident violate the tackle clause of the fifth amendment.
.
Snope v. Brown24-203
Question: Whether the Constitution allows Maryland to ban semi -utomatic rifles for common use for legal purposes, including the most popular rifle in America.
.
Franklin v. New York24-330
Question: (1) Whether the confrontation clause of the sixth amendment applies to statements outside the court that were admitted as evidence against criminal defendants if and only if the statements were created for the primary purpose of serving as a trial; and (2) Whether a report after occasion has been prepared about a criminal defendant of an agent for the state for use in a criminal case may be admitted as evidence against the defendant in the trial without giving the right to cross-examining the report’s author.
.
LM v. Town of Middleborough, Massachusetts24-410
Question: Whether the school’s officials can assume significant disturbance or a violation of the rights of others from a student’s silent, passive and observed ideological speech simply because this speech relates to questions of personal identity, even when the speech responds to the school’s opposite views, actions or policies.
(Reviewed after February 21, February 28 and March 7 Conferences.)
Neilly v. Michigan24-395
Question: Whether orderly ordered as part of a criminal verdict is punishment for the purpose of the constitution’s ex post facto clause.
(Reviewed after February 28 and Mar 7th conferences.)
Ellingburg against the United States24-482
Question: Whether criminal refund under the Law on Refunds of Mandatory Sacrifice has been punished for the purpose of Constitution’s Ex Post Facto clause.
(Reviewed after February 28 and Mar 7th conferences.)
Shockley v. Vandergriff24-517
Question: Whether the US Appeals Court for the 8th Circuit made a mistake in denying the petitioner’s application for dissence to appeal the denial of his sixth change ineffective assistance from legal requirements.
(Reviewed after February 28 and Mar 7th conferences.)
