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		<title>Thomas dissents in denial of climate change states case</title>
		<link>https://homesafetytechpros.com/thomas-dissents-in-denial-of-climate-change-states-case/</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 10 Mar 2025 16:33:32 +0000</pubDate>
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					<description><![CDATA[<p>Left: Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas. Right: Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Samuel Alito. (Alex Wong/Getty Images.) Two of the Supreme Court’s stalwart conservative justices railed against the Court’s majority for not allowing Alabama and a coalition of Republican-led states to step in and attempt to block dozens of climate-change lawsuits [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://homesafetytechpros.com/thomas-dissents-in-denial-of-climate-change-states-case/">Thomas dissents in denial of climate change states case</a> appeared first on <a href="https://homesafetytechpros.com">Home Safety Tech Pros</a>.</p>
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<div id="attachment_512815" style="width: 1210px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-512815" class="size-full wp-image-512815" src="https://am24.mediaite.com/lc/cnt/uploads/2025/03/Thomas-and-Alito.jpg" alt="" width="1200" height="627"/></p>
<p id="caption-attachment-512815" class="wp-caption-text">Left: Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas. Right: Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Samuel Alito. (Alex Wong/Getty Images.)</p>
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<p>Two of the Supreme Court’s stalwart conservative justices railed against the Court’s majority for not allowing Alabama and a coalition of Republican-led states to step in and <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/031025zor_7758.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">attempt to block</a> dozens of <a href="https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/supreme-court-gives-big-oil-another-shot-to-move-baltimore-climate-change-suit-to-different-court-sotomayor-pens-lonely-dissent/">climate-change lawsuits</a> filed by states led by Democrats against energy companies.</p>
<p>California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Rhode Island have filed over two dozen lawsuits against Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron and other oil companies seeking to hold them responsible for deceiving customers about the risks posed by fossil fuels. The particularities of the lawsuits vary, as each raises a set of allegations arising under the laws of the relevant state.</p>
<p>In general though, the lawsuits charge that the companies have known for decades that greenhouse gas emissions from use of fossil fuels would contribute to <a href="https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/supreme-court-rejects-petition-by-major-oil-companies-to-review-california-climate-change-lawsuit/">climate change</a>, and that the companies failed to warn consumers and used deceptive marketing practices that maximized profit, tricked consumers, and harmed the environment.</p>
<p>California was the first to file one of these lawsuits in 2023. At the time, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, <a href="https://www.gov.ca.gov/2023/09/16/people-of-the-state-of-california-v-big-oil/#:~:text=NEW%20YORK%20–%20Governor%20Gavin%20Newsom,Watch%20the%20video%20here.">said</a> the energy industry has been lying to citizens for over half a century. Newsom also said oil companies should be held accountable for “<a href="https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/pges-solution-to-preventing-other-wildfires-in-california-cut-peoples-power-for-days/">wildfires</a> wiping out entire communities, toxic smoke clogging our air, deadly heat waves, record-breaking droughts parching our wells.”</p>
<p>Alabama and 18 other Republican-run states sought to block the climate change lawsuits on the basis that California and the others were unconstitutionally attempting to dictate interstate energy policy beyond their own borders via the use of tort lawsuits. The states argue that this practice infringes on the federal government’s exclusive authority to regulate interstate emissions. The group requested to file a complaint directly with the Supreme Court as a dispute between states themselves, invoking the Court’s rarely-used <a href="https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/days-after-rejecting-absurd-texas-lawsuit-the-supreme-court-decided-a-real-original-jurisdiction-case/">original jurisdiction</a>.</p>
<p>California and the other defendant states challenged the filing and argues that the arguments Alabama and the others were seeking to raise could be raised by the energy companies in the climate change lawsuits themselves. In its brief, the California group argued that “Alabama’s desire to protect those private defendants from liability is not the kind of sovereign concern that warrants an exercise of this court’s original jurisdiction.”</p>
<aside class="o-callout__recirculate o-callout"/>
<p>The Court, without comment from the majority, declined to allow Alabama and the others to file their complaint before the justices Monday.</p>
<p>Justice Clarence Thomas penned a dissenting statement, joined in full by Justice Samuel Alito. in which Thomas chastised the justices for eschewing their responsibility to hear disputes between states. Thomas wrote that “the Court’s assumption that it has ‘discretion to decline review’ in suits between States is ‘suspect’ at best.”</p>
<p>According to Thomas, “This discretionary approach is a modern invention that the Court has never persuasively justified.” He wrote that the Court’s decision to make only “sparing use” of original jurisdiction is “part of a broader policy” that seeks to limit the Court’s caseload relating to disputes between states, which have the potential to become overwhelming in modern society.</p>
<p>Thomas, however, said that despite the rationale, decisions to decline review of disputes between states “are not ours to make,” as it is the Constitution that sets out the bounds of original jurisdiction. Further, he argued, the ruling, “leaves the 19 plaintiff States without any legal means of vindicating their claims against the 5 defendant States.”</p>
<p>A similar outcome occurred in the 2021 case of Texas v. California, in which Texas attempted to challenge a California law that prohibited the state from spending any money on travel to other states that fail to offer adequate protections for LGBTQ individuals. As in the climate change case, Texas alleged constitutional violations and asked the high court to weigh in. The justices declined to allow Texas to proceed with the filing, and Alito issued a scathing dissent — joined by Thomas — in which he said that the “economic warfare” between Texas and California is precisely the kind of case for which the Court has original jurisdiction.</p>
<p>The Court does occasionally exercise original jurisdiction, mostly in cases involving <a href="https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/new-jersey-appears-to-be-edging-out-its-new-york-neighbor-in-scotus-battle-over-regulation-of-waterfront/">water rights</a>, the dissent noted.</p>
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<p><em>Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this article.</em></p>
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<p>The post <a href="https://homesafetytechpros.com/thomas-dissents-in-denial-of-climate-change-states-case/">Thomas dissents in denial of climate change states case</a> appeared first on <a href="https://homesafetytechpros.com">Home Safety Tech Pros</a>.</p>
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		<title>Gorsuch dissents in Mrugeshkumar Shah restitution case</title>
		<link>https://homesafetytechpros.com/gorsuch-dissents-in-mrugeshkumar-shah-restitution-case/</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 25 Feb 2025 12:31:16 +0000</pubDate>
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					<description><![CDATA[<p>Justice Neil Gorsuch poses for an official portrait in the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court building on October 7, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.) The U.S. Supreme Court denied the appeal of a more than $82 million restitution order imposed on a group of doctors convicted of a massive [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://homesafetytechpros.com/gorsuch-dissents-in-mrugeshkumar-shah-restitution-case/">Gorsuch dissents in Mrugeshkumar Shah restitution case</a> appeared first on <a href="https://homesafetytechpros.com">Home Safety Tech Pros</a>.</p>
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<div id="attachment_350166" style="width: 1210px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-350166" class="size-full wp-image-350166" src="https://am22.mediaite.com/lc/cnt/uploads/2022/11/Gorsuch-1431381035.jpg" alt="A photo shows Neil Gorsuch." width="1200" height="627"/></p>
<p id="caption-attachment-350166" class="wp-caption-text">Justice Neil Gorsuch poses for an official portrait in the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court building on October 7, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.)</p>
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<p>The U.S. Supreme Court denied the appeal of a more than $82 million restitution order imposed on a group of doctors convicted of a massive fraud scheme in <a href="https://lawandcrime.com/tag/texas/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Texas</a>, but <a href="https://lawandcrime.com/tag/neil-gorsuch/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Justice Neil Gorsuch</a> <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/022425zor_6k47.pdf">dissented</a> from his fellow justices’ decision, saying that he would have chosen to review the lower court’s upholding of the restitution sentence.</p>
<p><a href="https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-shah-66">Forest Park Medical Center</a> was a physician-owned hospital in Dallas that was not part of any insurance company’s network and did not accept payments via Medicare or Medicaid. The practice made money by steering lucrative patients — those that distributed high reimbursements for out-of-network procedures — to its facility with the help of kickbacks paid to referring physicians. Forest Park’s owners were prosecuted and criminally convicted of a<a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/14-defendants-sentenced-74-years-forest-park-healthcare-fraud"> $200 million bribery scheme</a> for its practice of illegally incentivizing doctors to perform surgery at the facility with referral kickbacks falsely characterized as “marketing money” or consulting fees.</p>
<aside class="o-callout__recirculate o-callout"/>
<p>The practice owners were prosecuted and convicted under the federal Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS). Seven of the defendants were sentenced to a combined <a href="https://www.dmagazine.com/healthcare-business/2021/03/forest-park-defendants-sentenced-to-a-combined-74-years-in-prison/">more than 74 years in prison</a> and ordered to pay a total of $82.9 million in restitution.</p>
<p>Mrugeshkumar Shah, Shawn Mark Henry, Michael Bassem Rimlawi, Douglas Sung Won, Jackson Jacob, and Iris Kathleen Forrest appealed the restitution portion of their sentence. They argued that the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (MVRA) does not apply to their conviction because it was not “an offense against property.” Both the district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled against them</p>
<p>The defendants did not dispute that their conduct deprived private insurance companies of property by means of fraud or deceit, but they claimed that under the correct analysis, their actual conduct is not what matters. Rather, they said, the court must employ the “categorical approach,” and examine the <a href="https://casetext.com/statute/united-states-code/title-18-crimes-and-criminal-procedure/part-i-crimes/chapter-19-conspiracy/section-371-conspiracy-to-commit-offense-or-to-defraud-united-states">statutory</a> elements of the crime. Given that no element of the applicable statute involves fraud or deceit, the MVRA does not apply, according to the defendants.</p>
<p>The Fifth Circuit was unconvinced. Writing for the appellate court, Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Priscilla Richman, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that under the MVRA, the manner in which a crime was carried out is what matters for purpose of restitution — not the precise definition of the crime under the prosecuting statute.</p>
<p>“The categorical approach is inappropriate for this [restitution] statute and ‘the [district] court may look to the facts and circumstances of the offense of conviction to determine if the MVRA authorizes a restitution order,&#8221;” wrote Richman.</p>
<p>The justices denied certiorari in the case Monday, thereby leaving the Fifth Circuit’s decision standing as the final word on the issue of restitution.</p>
<p>Gorsuch, however, penned a brief dissenting statement in which he expressed, “I have my doubts” about a judge’s ability to legally order restitution in a criminal case based on their own factual findings, without the aid of a jury.</p>
<p>Gorsuch argued that the Sixth Amendment guarantees a trial by jury, and that this means that only a jury is entitled to make a finding on facts with the propensity to increase a defendant’s penalties. According to the justice, the founders agreed.</p>
<p>“And more than a little evidence suggests that, at the time of the founding, juries found the facts needed to justify criminal restitution awards,” Gorsuch wrote.</p>
<p>Gorsuch said that he would have granted review in the case to answer the question of whether the Fifth Circuit handled its analysis properly under applicable precedent, “and the Constitution’s original meaning.”</p>
<p>The justice ended his brief statement with something of a warning: “In the absence of this Court’s review, I can only hope that federal and state courts will continue to consider carefully the Sixth Amendment’s application to criminal restitution orders.”</p>
<p><a href="https://lawandcrime.com/crime/modern-day-snake-oil-salesman-masquerading-as-doctor-with-silver-miracle-cure-for-covid-19-locked-up-for-years-after-representing-self-at-trial/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>More from Law&amp;Crime: ‘Modern day snake oil salesman’ masquerading as doctor with ‘Silver Miracle’ cure for COVID-19 locked up for years after representing self at trial</strong></a></p>
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<p>The post <a href="https://homesafetytechpros.com/gorsuch-dissents-in-mrugeshkumar-shah-restitution-case/">Gorsuch dissents in Mrugeshkumar Shah restitution case</a> appeared first on <a href="https://homesafetytechpros.com">Home Safety Tech Pros</a>.</p>
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		<title>Thomas dissents in death penalty ruling in &#8216;slut puppy&#8217; case</title>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 21 Jan 2025 20:45:45 +0000</pubDate>
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					<description><![CDATA[<p>Left: Brenda Evers Andrew (image via Oklahoma Dept. of Corrections); Right: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (image by Erin Schaff/Pool/Getty Images). The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the only woman on death row in Oklahoma may have received an unfair trial because prosecutors introduced a slew of irrelevant evidence against her that presented her [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://homesafetytechpros.com/thomas-dissents-in-death-penalty-ruling-in-slut-puppy-case/">Thomas dissents in death penalty ruling in &#8216;slut puppy&#8217; case</a> appeared first on <a href="https://homesafetytechpros.com">Home Safety Tech Pros</a>.</p>
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<div id="attachment_503261" style="width: 1210px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-503261" class="wp-image-503261 size-full" src="https://am22.mediaite.com/lc/cnt/uploads/2025/01/AndrewThomas.jpg" alt="" width="1200" height="627"/></p>
<p id="caption-attachment-503261" class="wp-caption-text">Left: Brenda Evers Andrew (image via Oklahoma Dept. of Corrections); Right: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (image by Erin Schaff/Pool/Getty Images).</p>
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<p>The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the only woman on death row in Oklahoma may have received an unfair trial because prosecutors introduced a slew of irrelevant evidence against her that presented her as an adulterous “slut puppy” to the jury.</p>
<p>The justices issued a per curiam <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/012125zor_f204.pdf">decision</a> ordering the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit to reexamine the prosecution of Brenda Evers Andrew to determine if Andrew was deprived of due process when prosecutors used much of their tine at the proceedings introducing irrelevant evidence about her sex life, her purported failings as a mother and wife, and her alleged propensity for wearing sexy clothes.</p>
<p>Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, however, were not nearly as troubled by the potentially prejudicial evidence introduced against Andrew, and dissented from the Court’s ruling.</p>
<aside class="o-callout__recirculate o-callout"/>
<p>Brenda Andrew was convicted of the capital murder of her husband, Robert Andrew. Brenda Andrew’s extramarital lover — who was also her Sunday school teaching partner — James Pavatt, a life insurance agent with whom both Andrews were acquainted, was also convicted of the murder.</p>
<p>On Nov. 20, 2001, Robert Andrew was fatally shot in his garage. His wife was also shot in the arm during the incident, and she later told police that two armed assailants carried out the shooting. After Robert Andrew’s death, Pavatt and Brenda Andrew traveled to Mexico, then became suspects in the murder, until eventually, Pavatt confessed to committing the shooting with a friend. He denied that Brenda Andrew had been involved.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the state of Oklahoma prosecuted Pavatt and Andrew separately, each for capital murder. At Brenda Andrew’s trial, the prosecution’s theory was that she conspired with Pavatt to murder Robert Andrew in order to receive proceeds from the $800,000 life insurance policy the couple had purchased from Pavatt. Pavatt was convicted and sentenced to death, and has spent the last 20 years on Oklahoma’s notably <a href="https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/constitutional-violations-cannot-be-the-final-word-oklahoma-admits-death-row-inmate-was-falsely-tried-in-supreme-court-brief-says-prosecutor-knowingly-elicited-false-testimony-from-mentally/">problematic</a> death row.</p>
<p>After Brenda Andrew’s conviction, she filed a federal habeas petition in which she argued that irrelevant evidence introduced at her trial had been so prejudicial that it violated the due process clause of the Constitution. Prosecutors agreed that much of the evidence in question had lacked relevance, but disagreed that including it amounted to a due process violation.</p>
<p>In their ruling Tuesday, the justices recounted some of the problematic evidence introduced at Brenda Andrew’s trial:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Among other things, the prosecution elicited testimony about Andrew’s sexual partners reaching back two decades; about the outfits she wore to dinner or during grocery runs; about the underwear she packed for vacation; and about how often she had sex in her car. At least two of the prosecution’s guilt phase witnesses took the stand exclusively to testify about Andrew’s provocative clothing, and others were asked to comment on whether a good mother would dress or behave the way Andrew had. In its closing statement, the prosecution again invoked these themes, including by displaying Andrew’s “thong underwear” to the jury, by reminding the jury of Andrew’s alleged affairs during college, and by emphasizing that Andrew “had sex on [her husband] over and over and over” while “keeping a boyfriend on the side.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Her lawyers later raised objections to the prosecutors’ “relentless” derision of their client, including referring to her as a “slut puppy” during the proceedings.</p>
<p>Though a split panel of the Tenth Circuit ruled against Brenda Andrew, one dissenting judge wrote that the state was focused “from start to finish on Ms. Andrew’s sex life,” in order to portray the defendant as “a scarlet woman, a modern Jezebel,” with “loose morals … plucking away any realistic chance that the jury would seriously consider her version of events.”</p>
<p>To hear Thomas and Gorsuch tell it, though, there was no issue with the fairness of Brenda Andrew’s trial. Thomas wrote in dissent that he rejected the majority’s recitation of facts as just one of the “errors” his fellow justices committed. Rather, Thomas noted, “the State presented ‘overwhelming evidence’ that Andrew participated in the murder of her husband,” with whom she had been entangled in a difficult divorce. Given the “unusually strong evidentiary case, which leaves little or no doubt that [Brenda Andrew] is guilty of the crimes charged,” the inclusion of evidence about her sexual history did not render the trial unfair, the dissent said.</p>
<p>As if to underscore his point, Thomas devoted nearly a quarter of his 17-page dissenting statement to providing his own statement of facts. Thomas detailed the victim’s discovery shortly before his death that his car’s brake lines had been cut, his receipt of phone calls falsely claiming that his wife was in the hospital, and the detailed plan hatched between Brenda Andrew and Pavatt to kill Robert Andrew. Thomas argued that much of the information about Brenda Andrew’s habits and history were relevant to establish her motive and intent.</p>
<p>While Thomas allowed that some of the evidence at trial may have been irrelevant — such as evidence of the particular clothing the defendant wore to dinner — introduction of that evidence had been harmless. Thomas also said that the prosecutor’s evidence that about Brenda Andrew’s “failings as a mother” were nothing more than rebuttal to her own evidence that she was a good mother. Thomas noted that while evidence of Brenda Andrew’s sexual history may have been introduced at trial, the prosecutors did not mention it during closing arguments.</p>
<p>Likewise, Thomas dismissed the “slut puppy” comment as a nonissue, explaining that prosecutors had not been calling Andrew a “slut puppy,” but rather, had been merely recounting an “abusive” phone call between Brenda Andrew and her husband in which she “baselessly” accused him of having an affair and used the term to refer to the other woman.</p>
<p>Oklahoma <a href="https://lawandcrime.com/important/after-federal-judge-upholds-lethal-injection-protocol-oklahoma-makes-plans-to-execute-one-person-nearly-every-month-through-2024/">resumed</a> executions in 2022 after a six-year hiatus following the botched lethal injections of two inmates. The state currently has 32 inmates on death row, of which Brenda Andrew is the only woman. Recently, an Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals judge <a href="https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/man-up-oklahoma-judge-says-corrections-staff-should-just-suck-it-up-and-stop-asking-for-more-time-between-executions/">said</a> in open court that rather than pacing executions far enough apart to give corrections staff time to recover from an “unsustainable” pace of back-to-back deaths, the employees involved should simply “man up” and “suck it up.”</p>
<p>You can read the Supreme Court’s full ruling <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/012125zor_f204.pdf">here</a>.</p>
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<p>The post <a href="https://homesafetytechpros.com/thomas-dissents-in-death-penalty-ruling-in-slut-puppy-case/">Thomas dissents in death penalty ruling in &#8216;slut puppy&#8217; case</a> appeared first on <a href="https://homesafetytechpros.com">Home Safety Tech Pros</a>.</p>
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