The Oyez Project: 2006 Term Opinions by Kennedy

Ayers v. Belmontes

In 1981, Fernando Belmontes Jr. was convicted of the first-degree murder of Steacy McConnell. During the sentencing phase of the trial, prosecutors sought the death penalty. Belmontes's defense lawyers argued for a life term in prison, and presented evidence of his history as a victim of abuse and poverty as well as his capacity for rehabilitation as mitigating factors. Before sentencing, the California trial judge instructed the jury to consider 11 possible mitigating factors, labeled (a) through (k), which jurors are required by California law to consider. The judge read factor (k), a catch-all factor, verbatim from the statute, telling jurors to consider "[a]ny other circumstance which extenuates the gravity of the crime even though it is not a legal excuse for the crime."

After the jury sentenced Belmontes to death, he appealed to the California Supreme Court, arguing that the jury had misunderstood the ambiguous factor (k) instruction to mean that they should not consider non-crime-related mitigating factors. Since the Supreme Court has ruled that jurors must consider all mitigating evidence offered by a defendant in a capital case, this would render the conviction unconstitutional. The California Supreme Court upheld the conviction, relying on Boyde v. California, in which the Supreme Court affirmed that factor (k) is constitutional unless there is a "reasonable likelihood" that jurors misunderstood it. Belmondes appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where his death sentence was finally overturned in 2003. The Circuit Court ruled that jurors had been confused by the factor (k) instruction, which caused them to fail to consider the mitigating evidence of Belmondes's capacity for rehabilitation.

After the Supreme Court remanded the case back to the Ninth Circuit for reconsideration, the Circuit Court reaffirmed its decision in 2005. The Circuit Court held that the verbatim or "unadorned" reading of the factor (k) instruction would have misled a reasonable juror. The Supreme Court agreed to consider the constitutional sufficiency of factor (k), as well as the possible retroactive applicability of the Circuit Court's holding.

Gonzales v. Carhart

In 2003, Congress passed and the President signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. The controversial concept of partial-birth abortion is defined in the Act as any abortion in which the death of the fetus occurs when "the entire fetal head [...] or [...] any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother." Dr. Leroy Carhart and other physicians who perform late-term abortions sued to stop the Act from going into effect. The plaintiffs argued that the Act could apply to a more common abortion procedure known as "D&E" ("dilation and evacuation"), as well as to the less common "intact D&E," sometimes called D&X ("dilation and extraction"). With this application the Act would ban most late-term abortions and thus be an unconstitutional "undue burden" on the right to an abortion, as defined by the Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The plaintiffs also argued that the Act's lack of an exception for abortions necessary to protect the health of the mother rendered it unconstitutional under the Supreme Court's decision in Stenberg v. Carhart, regardless of Congress's finding in the Act that partial-birth abortions are never medically necessary.

A federal District Court agreed and ruled the Act unconstitutional on both grounds. The government appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The government argued that the Act only bans a narrow category of abortion procedures, and that a health exception is not required when Congress determines that a banned abortion procedure is never necessary for the health of the mother. The Eighth Circuit disagreed and upheld the District Court, ruling that a health exception is required for all bans on abortion procedures when "substantial medical authority" supports the necessity of the procedure. The Circuit Court ruled that the ongoing disagreement among medical experts over the necessity of intact D&E abortions was sufficient to establish that the Act was unconstitutional without a health exception. The Circuit Court did not reach the question of whether the Act was so broad as to qualify as an unconstitutional "undue burden."

Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood sued the Attorney General of the United States, arguing that the Act was unconstitutional under the right to an abortion protected by the substantive component of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade and subsequent cases. The District Court agreed and stopped the Act from going into effect.

On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed. Though the government claimed that the Act banned only a narrow, rare category of abortions, the Circuit Court ruled that the Act applied to the common abortion procedure known as "D&E" ("dilation and evacuation"), as well as to the far less common "intact D&E," sometimes called "D&X" ("dilation and extraction"). This made the ban expansive enough to qualify as an unconstitutional "undue burden" on the right to abortion, as defined in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

The Ninth Circuit also ruled that the Act's lack of an exception for abortions necessary to protect the health of the mother rendered it unconstitutional. Congress had included in the Act a finding that partial-birth abortions were never medically necessary, but the Ninth Circuit held that the Supreme Court's decision in Stenberg v. Carhart required the health exception in all cases where medical opinion on the necessity an abortion procedure is divided.

Finally, the Circuit Court ruled that the Act was unconstitutionally vague, because the inclusion of ambiguous statutory terms such as "partial-birth abortion" would prevent physicians from knowing which methods of abortion were covered. The Circuit Court determined that the proper course of action was to block enforcement of the entire Act.

KSR International Co. v. Teleflex, Inc.

Teleflex sued KSR International (KSR), alleging that KSR had infringed on its patent for an adjustable gas-pedal system composed of an adjustable accelerator pedal and an electronic throttle control. KSR countered that Teleflex's patent was obvious, and therefore unenforceable. Under 25 U.S.C. Section 103(a), obvious inventions cannot be patented. A federal District Court granted summary judgment for KSR, accepting KSR's argument that the invention was obvious because each of the invention's components existed in previous patents. Anyone with knowledge or experience in the industry, the District Court ruled, would have considered it obvious that the two components could be combined. Teleflex appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which reversed the District Court. The Circuit Court found the lower court's analysis incomplete, because the District Court had not applied a full "teaching-suggestion-motivation test." Under this test, in order to label the patent obvious the District Court would have needed to identify the specific "teaching, suggestion, or motivation" that would have led a knowledgeable person to combine the two previously-existing components. KSR appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the Circuit Court's test conflicted with Supreme Court precedent and that it would allow too many patents of obvious inventions.

Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc.

Leegin Creative Leather Products, a manufacturer of women's accessories, entered into vertical minimum price agreements with its retailers. The agreements required the retailers to charge no less than certain minimum prices for Leegin products. According to Leegin, the price minimums were intended to encourage competition among retailers in customer service and product promotion. When one retailer, PSKS, discounted Leegin products below the minimum, Leegin dropped the retailer. PSKS sued, arguing that Leegin was violating Section 1 of the Sherman Act by engaging in anticompetitive price fixing. Under the Supreme Court's 1911 decision in Dr. Miles Medical Co. v. John D. Park & Sons Co., mandatory minimum price agreements are per se illegal under the Act - that is, they are automatically illegal regardless of the circumstances.

Leegin argued that this rule was based on outdated economics. It contended that a better legal analysis would be the "rule of reason," under which price minimums would be held illegal only in cases where they could be shown to be anticompetitive. Both the District Court and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejected these arguments. The courts felt compelled to follow the Supreme Court's rule in the Dr. Miles case, under which Leegin's practices were illegal regardless of the economic arguments put forward by the company.

Panetti v. Quarterman

Scott Louis Panetti was convicted of the murder of his wife's parents and sentenced to death. He petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus in federal District Court, claiming mental illness. The Supreme Court had ruled in Ford v. Wainwright that execution of the mentally ill is barred by the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. A psychiatric evaluation found that Panetti believed that the State was "in league with the forces of evil" and was executing him in order to "prevent him from preaching the Gospel." However, doctors also found Panetti to be aware of his crime, of the fact that he was to be executed, and of the State's stated reason for executing him. The District Court concluded that he was sufficiently sane to be executed.

On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the lower court. The Fifth Circuit rejected Panetti's argument that an inmate cannot be executed if he lacks a rational understanding of the State's motivation for the execution. The Court of Appeals instead relied on Justice Lewis Powell's concurrence in Ford, holding that an inmate need only have an awareness of the State's reason for execution, not necessarily a rational understanding of it.

Smith v. Texas

LaRoyce Smith was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. In 2004, the Supreme Court overturned his death sentence and sent the case back to state court because of a judge's improper jury instruction. (See Smith v. Texas, No. 04-5323.) Nevertheless, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals re-imposed the sentence, holding that the erroneous instruction had not done any "egregious harm" to the fairness of Smith's sentencing. The Texas court found that the jury had still been able to consider all relevant mitigating evidence, despite the unconstitutional instruction. The Supreme Court agreed to review the case a second time.

Uttecht v. Brown

A Washington State jury sentenced Cal Brown to death for murder. Brown protested that unfair jury selection had guaranteed a "verdict of death." One potential juror who expressed willingness to impose the death penalty only in "severe situations" was dismissed by the judge for cause. The Washington Supreme Court upheld the dismissal.

Brown appealed first to a federal district court and then to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which ruled that the dismissed juror was not "substantially impaired" in his ability to follow the law. Supreme Court precedent required that jurors only be dismissed if their personal views prevent them from performing their duties. The prosecution unsuccessfully petitioned for the Ninth Circuit to rehear the case en banc on the ground that the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act required appeals courts to give deference to trial judges' evaluations of jurors.

Winkelman v. Parma City School District

Jeff and Sandee Winkelman claimed that Parma City School District failed to give their disabled son Jacob a "free appropriate public education" as required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Despite the Winkelmans' opposition, the school district planned to place Jacob in a public elementary school. After a preliminary school district hearing affirmed Jacob's placement, the Winkelmans placed Jacob in a private school at their own expense and petitioned a federal District Court for reimbursement.

The District Court ruled for the School District. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit dismissed the suit because the Winkelmans lacked a lawyer. The Winkelmans argued that according to the IDEA, "any party aggrieved by the findings" of a preliminary school district hearing may appeal in a federal court. Also, because the IDEA demands active parental involvement in order to enforce proper child placement, the parent should be able to appear in court "pro se" - without a lawyer. The Sixth Circuit rejected both arguments and held that the IDEA does not establish any right of a non-lawyer parent to represent his disabled child in federal court. Non-lawyer parents cannot represent themselves either, the Circuit Court ruled, because the IDEA protects the rights of the child, not the parents.