News Roundup

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens died on Tuesday in Florida at the age of 99 after suffering a stroke.  As the Associated Press reports, Stevens served on the Court for nearly 35 years.  He was nominated to the bench by President Gerald Ford in 1975 and retired in 2010.  In 1976, Stevens joined the plurality opinion in Gregg v. Georgia, holding that Georgia’s death penalty scheme was not unconstitutional and ending the de facto national moratorium on the death penalty that followed Furman v. Georgia in 1972.  In 2002, Stevens wrote the majority opinion in Atkins v. Virginia, holding that it was unconstitutional to impose the death penalty on intellectually disabled offenders.  And in 2008, he wrote a concurring opinion in Baze v. Rees that indicated that he had arrived at the personal belief that the death penalty was unconstitutional in all cases.  Keep reading for more news. Hemp Headache.  In a series of posts, Phil has been keeping blog readers up to date on the complicated issues involved in marijuana prosecutions following the legalization of hemp products.  WRAL reports that the General Assembly is debating legislative responses to the situation, including a proposal to include smokable hemp within the definition of marijuana.  As Phil has noted, the similarities between hemp flowers – the portion of the plant sold in smokable form – and marijuana flowers has caused law enforcement agencies to say that they are struggling to develop probable cause in marijuana investigations. ICE Activists.  Another report [...]