Today, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in four cases:
Ramos v. Louisiana, No. 18-5924: Whether the Fourteenth Amendment fully incorporates the Sixth Amendment guarantee of a unanimous verdict.
Kahler v. Kansas, No. 18-6135: Do the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments permit a state to abolish the insanity defense?
Kansas v. Garcia, No. 17-834: (1) Whether the Immigration Reform and Control Act (“IRCA”) expressly preempts the States from using any information entered on or appended to a federal Form I-9, including common information such as name, date of birth, and social security number, in a prosecution of any person (citizen or alien) when that same, commonly used information also appears in non-IRCA documents, such as state tax forms, leases, and credit applications. (2) Whether the IRCA impliedly preempts Kansas’s prosecution of respondents.
Mathena v. Malvo, No. 18-217: This case, involving one of the D.C. snipers and his sentence of life without parole, presents the following question: Did the Fourth Circuit err in concluding—in direct conflict with Virginia’s highest court and other courts—that a decision of this Court (Montgomery v. Louisiana, 136 S. Ct. 718 (2016)) addressing whether a new constitutional rule announced in an earlier decision (Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012)) applies retroactively on collateral review may properly be interpreted as modifying and substantively expanding the very rule whose retroactivity was in question?