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In Scalia's wake, SCOTUS for the defendant
Mar. 8th, 2016 12:52 pmhttps://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/577/14-10008/#
I'm reminded of one of the areas where I agreed with Scalia's judicial philosophy: he believed that criminal defendants should be able to turn to the courts to have prosecutorial wrongs righted. Here the Court appears to be following in that tradition, overturning lower courts in a case where the prosecution stands accused of withholding evidence material to the defense.
(It's also quite likely the defendant will be able to introduce new evidence supporting his alibi and may in fact be innocent but the Supreme Court didn't rule on that issue. This is actually quite common - if the Court feels it has enough to decide the case before it on a given issue it will often stay silent on other issues, a practice I wish lower courts would emulate more often.)
I'm reminded of one of the areas where I agreed with Scalia's judicial philosophy: he believed that criminal defendants should be able to turn to the courts to have prosecutorial wrongs righted. Here the Court appears to be following in that tradition, overturning lower courts in a case where the prosecution stands accused of withholding evidence material to the defense.
(It's also quite likely the defendant will be able to introduce new evidence supporting his alibi and may in fact be innocent but the Supreme Court didn't rule on that issue. This is actually quite common - if the Court feels it has enough to decide the case before it on a given issue it will often stay silent on other issues, a practice I wish lower courts would emulate more often.)
