It isn't often that a criminal law decision by the United States Supreme Court is an above-the-fold front page story in the News and Observer, but that's the situation today. The case in question is J.D.B. v. North Carolina, and while I plan to blog about it in detail on Monday, the short version is this: courts should consider the age of a suspect when determining whether the suspect is in custody for Miranda purposes. Assistant Appellate Defender Barbara Blackman argued the case for the juvenile petitioner, and Attorney General Roy Cooper argued for the state. There's been more news this week than I can cram into a post of reasonable length, but some of the top stories are as follows: 1. The Supreme Court also decided Davis v. United States. The Court's syllabus summarizes the holding: "Searches conducted in objectively reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent are not subject to the exclusionary rule." More on this case next week. As noted here, the Court also granted certiorari in Setser v. United States, a case which will determine whether a federal district court may impose a sentence to run consecutively with a not-yet-imposed state sentence. The Justices won't take that case up until after the summer recess. If you're interested in the Justices travel schedules and paid speaking engagements, the Wall Street Journal Law Blog has details here, but to sum up, the conservative Justices go to Italy while the liberals to go Aspen. 2. Elsewhere in Washington, Congress is busy [...]
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