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Friday, January 16, 2009

Courts - Two SCOTUS rulings on Indiana cases cited in recent decisions

"Psychotic Defendant, Though Competent to Stand Trial, Can't Be His Own Lawyer" is the headline to this story by Henry Gottlieb in the New Jersey Law Journal. Some quotes:

Mentally ill criminal defendants who are found to be competent to stand trial don't automatically have the right to act as their own counsel, a New Jersey appeals court held Wednesday.

The ruling, made possible by a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that gives state courts discretion to decide such issues, upheld a trial judge who assigned a lawyer to represent an accused thief who proclaimed he was the acolyte of an ancient civilization's princess. * * *

Last June in Edwards v. Indiana, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that precedents affirming a Sixth Amendment right to self-representation apply only when the defendant "voluntarily and intelligently elects to do so" and that states can restrict the right when an individual's mental competency is questionable.

The Court also said a defendant must be mentally ill and not merely difficult to handle or disruptive to be deprived of the right of self-representation, a condition repeated by the New Jersey judges in Wednesday's ruling.

"Georgia’s voter ID law upheld in federal appeals court ruling" is the headline to this story by Bill Rankin of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Some quotes:
The federal appeals court in Atlanta on Wednesday upheld Georgia’s voter identification law, saying the burden of presenting a government-issued photo ID at the polls is trumped by the need to safeguard the integrity of elections.

“The insignificant burden imposed by the Georgia statute is outweighed by the interests in detecting and deterring voter fraud,” Judge Bill Pryor wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The decision dismisses a lawsuit filed by two elderly voters, one in Rome and another in Screven County, the NAACP and other civil rights groups. * * *

On Wednesday, the 11th Circuit relied heavily on a U.S. Supreme Court decision last April upholding a similar voter ID law in Indiana. [See this ILB entry re Crawford v. Marion County Election Board.]

In that ruling, the high court stated, “There is no question about the legitimacy or importance of the state’s interest in counting only the votes of eligible voters.”

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 16, 2009 10:00 AM
Posted to Courts in general