Recent SCOTUS Cases

Curtis Flowers was tried six separate times for the same murder by the same prosecutor. Several of his convictions were vacated by the Mississippi Supreme Court based on findings that the State engaged in prosecutorial misconduct and used it peremptory strikes on the basis of race in violation of Batson v. Kentucky. After his sixth trial, in which the State struck five black jurors and allowed one black juror to be seated, Flowers was convicted.

The Court affirmed the defendant’s federal conviction for the same crime he had been convicted under Alabama state law, reaffirming the dual sovereignty exception to the Double Jeopardy clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The Court affirmed the defendant’s conviction for a DUI after police took his blood while he was passed out, with a plurality of the  Court holding that conducting a blood test on a defendant while he is passed out is permissible under the “exigent circumstance” exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.