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All rights are reserved.

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People have rights.

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Bail not required, fines not imposed.

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Because they are not tailored to individual defendants' culpability, mandatory minimum sentences are ripe targets for Eighth Amendment challenges. In Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), "two strands of precedent reflecting . . . concern with proportionate punishment" came together: first, categorical mismatches between a class of defendants (frequently juveniles) and sentencing practices; and second, prohibitions on mandatory capital punishment. Id. at 470. The Court held that "mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles violate the Eighth Amendment." Id. The opinion could also be seen to represent a broader concern on the Court about mandatory sentences in general. See id. at 476 ("[M]andatory penalties, by their nature, preclude a sentencer from taking account of an offender's age and the wealth of characteristics and circumstances attendant to it."). Section 924(c) 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) (2012). prescribes a mandatory minimum sentence of thirty years for using a machine gun in the commission of a violent crime. Recently, in United States v. Slatten, the D.C. Circuit held that sentence to be cruel and unusual as applied to military contractors who were convicted of manslaughter after a shooting in Iraq resulted in several civilian deaths. This decision is in tension with Supreme Court precedent in two ways. First, it is unusual to overturn a long prison sentence on Eighth Amendment grounds at all. And second, the court reviewed the proportionality of the thirty-year § 924(c) sentence separately from the one-day sentence imposed for defendants' other crimes, which contrasts with the "sentencing package" approach recently endorsed by the Supreme Court. The court could have diminished these tensions while achieving the same result by granting defendants' categorical, rather than as-applied, Eighth Amendment challenge.

The D.C. Circuit affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded for sentencing. In a per curiam opinion, the court ruled on several jurisdictional, procedural, and substantive issues. On jurisdiction, the court found that prosecution was authorized under the "'deliberately expansive' language" of the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act 18 U.S.C. §§ 3261-3267. (MEJA). Slatten, 865 F.3d at 778. MEJA corrects a "jurisdictional gap," id. at 779 (quoting H.R. Rep. No. 106-778, at 5 (2000)), by allowing domestic prosecution for crimes committed overseas by civilians supporting American military missions (who are not subject to courts-martial). Id. at 778-79. Venue in the District of Columbia was proper.

Applying two "'highly deferential' standard[s]," the circuit court next affirmed the district court's ruling that defendants were not entitled to a new trial because of contradictory evidence Id. at 789-92. Defendants moved for a new trial because of contradictions between a prosecution witness's trial testimony and his Victim Impact Statement (VIS). Id. at 789. The appellate court found that defendants did not meet the "high bar," id. at 791 (quoting United States v. Celis, 608 F.3d 818, 848 (D.C. Cir. 2010)), of proving that the "VIS would probably result in an acquittal at a new trial," id. (citing Thompson v. United States, 188 F.2d 652, 653 (D.C. Cir. 1951)). and ruled against all but one of Liberty and Slatten's challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence supporting their convictions. Id. at 792. The circuit court vacated one of Liberty's counts of attempted manslaughter, finding it to "be based on mere speculation." Id. at 795. On all other counts, the court found that, while they "may have poked holes in some of the evidence," Liberty and Slatten did not "show[] that no reasonable factfinder could find [them] guilty." Id. (Liberty); see id. at 796 (Slatten).

As to the gravity of the offense, the court found that several circumstances limited defendants' culpability. The court took care to distinguish between defendants' decision to shoot, which resulted in the manslaughter charges, and culpability under § 924(c) for their choice of weapon. The defendants were required to carry machine guns as part of their employment providing security for the Department of State, and they were ordered to go to Nisur Square. This diminished culpability for the gun charge did not match the severity of the thirty-year sentence. Except for death or life imprisonment, thirty years is the harshest mandatory federal sentence that can be imposed on first-time offenders. The mismatch between the gravity of defendants' crimes and the severity of their sentences led to an "inference of gross disproportionality."

The next step was comparing the sentences at issue to those received by other offenders who committed the same crime. This proved to be a challenge, because Slatten was the first instance of government contractors being found guilty of violating § 924(c) for using weapons in a war zone. The court used § 924(c) violations by law enforcement personnel with government-issued firearms as a point of comparison and found that the statute is almost exclusively applied when an officer intentionally uses a weapon to commit a crime outside the scope of their duties. According to the court, military contractors, who work in war zones and use lethal force as a central part of their jobs, should be granted more leeway than law enforcement officers, who work in the community and should use lethal force only as a last resort. Broadening the scope of its comparison beyond § 924(c), the court found that similarly harsh sentences were usually imposed on first-time offenders only when their crimes were intentional and serious.

Judge Rogers dissented from the court's ruling on the mandatory minimum sentence. Id. at 823-24 (Rogers, J., concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part). Judge Rogers also concurred with respect to Slatten's motion to sever, arguing that the codefendant's statement was inculpatory, rather than exculpatory, and therefore should have been admitted without resorting to the residual hearsay exception. Id. at 829. The other judges on the panel also each filed separate opinions. Judge Henderson concurred with respect to Slatten's vindictive prosecution claim, noting that the government needed to reindict Slatten only due to an earlier, mistaken ruling by the D.C. Circuit. Id. at 820, 823 (Henderson, J., concurring in part). Judge Brown dissented from the court's "unnecessarily broad[]" interpretation of MEJA. Id. at 832 (Brown, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Noting that each defendant was convicted of killing more than five people and attempting to kill more than ten more, and that, putting § 924(c) aside, each defendant faced a maximum sentence of more than 100 years for these manslaughter convictions, Judge Rogers disagreed with the court's ruling that the thirty-year sentences were disproportionate. She argued that the court evaluated the mandatory thirty-year sentences as "freestanding," when it should have considered the full "sentencing packages" of thirty years and one day for the § 924(c) and manslaughter convictions combined. In that light, "the result [was] not disproportionate to the defendants' crimes, let alone grossly, unconstitutionally disproportionate."

Judge Rogers's dissent is more consistent with Eighth Amendment precedent than is the court's per curiam opinion. It is highly unusual to overturn a term-of-years sentence on proportionality grounds. By separating out the § 924(c) sentence, the court was able to highlight the facts that reduced the defendants' culpability and dismiss those that increased culpability. But that approach was itself unusual and in tension with the Supreme Court's recent decision in Dean v. United States. 137 S. Ct. 1170 (2017). The court could have avoided these difficulties by overturning the mandatory thirty-year sentence on categorical, rather than as-applied, grounds.

Term-of-years sentences are almost never struck down under the Eighth Amendment. Rachel E. Barkow, The Court of Life and Death: The Two Tracks of Constitutional Sentencing Law and the Case for Uniformity, 107 Mich. L. Rev. 1145, 1159-61 (2009). Although the Slatten court acknowledged that such rulings "should be exceedingly rare," 865 F.3d at 812 (quoting Hutto v. Davis, 454 U.S. 370, 374 (1982) (per curiam)). it still underplayed the weight of precedent on this point. In the last century, the Supreme Court has ruled only once that a sentence violated the Eighth Amendment because it was excessively long, in Solem v. Helm. 463 U.S. 277 (1983); see Richard S. Frase, Excessive Prison Sentences, Punishment Goals, and the Eighth Amendment: "Proportionality" Relative to What?, 89 Minn. L. Rev. 571, 579 (2005). In that case, the defendant was sentenced under a recidivist statute to life without parole for a nonviolent crime (specifically, issuing a no-account check for $100), a stark contrast to both the length of sentence and the gravity of the offense in Slatten. Since Solem, the Court has upheld a mandatory sentence of life without parole for a first-time offender convicted of drug possession in Harmelin v. Michigan. The Court has repeatedly rejected challenges to sentences that are comparable to or lengthier than those in Slatten for less serious, nonviolent crimes. See Lockyer v. Andrade, 538 U.S. 63, 66, 77 (2003) (upholding a twenty-five years to life sentence for a triggering offense of stealing $68.84 worth of videotapes); Ewing v. California, 538 U.S. 11, 35 (2003) (Breyer, J., dissenting) (noting that the triggering offense for a twenty-five years to life sentence was theft of golf clubs worth $1197); Rummel v. Estelle, 445 U.S. 263, 265-66 (1980) (upholding a mandatory life sentence under a three-strikes law for "obtaining $120.75 by false pretenses," id. at 266); Robert J. Smith & Zoë Robinson, Constitutional Liberty and the Progression of Punishment, 102 Cornell L. Rev. 413, 443-44 (2017) (collecting cases). These harsh sentences for seemingly trivial crimes were imposed as a consequence of mandatory minimum three-strikes laws. See id. While the Slatten defendants, as first-time offenders, may be distinguishable from some of these extreme examples of harsh mandatory minimum sentences, Harmelin demonstrates that the Court has also upheld harsh mandatory sentences for first-time offenders.

The Slatten court overcame this precedent by insisting it was analyzing the proportionality of the sentences only with regard to the weapons charge under § 924(c), and not with regard to the manslaughter charges. As the preceding examples show, had the court not cabined its analysis to the weapons charge, but also considered the manslaughter convictions, it would have been hard-pressed to find thirty-year sentences disproportionate. See Gary T. Lowenthal, Mandatory Sentencing Laws: Undermining the Effectiveness of Determinate Sentencing Reform, 81 Calif. L. Rev. 61, 117 (1993) (concluding that the Court is particularly unwilling to interfere with mandatory sentences for violent crimes, which "directly threaten the physical safety of others"). Compared to other sentences that have been upheld, thirty years for multiple counts of manslaughter does not seem grossly disproportionate. Even within the § 924(c) context, the court's decision is outside the norm: never before has a court of appeals overturned a § 924(c) mandatory minimum sentence under the Eighth Amendment.

As Judge Rogers noted in her dissent, the Slatten court's proportionality analysis is difficult to reconcile with the logic of Dean. In that case, the Supreme Court held that sentencing courts could consider § 924(c)'s harsh mandatory sentence in their deliberations as to additional discretionary sentences. Dean v. United States, 137 S. Ct. 1170, 1178 (2017). In these "sentencing package cases," judges can impose lenient sentences for predicate crimes when they believe that the mandatory § 924(c) sentence adequately accounts for a defendant's total culpability, even if the discretionary sentence would be inappropriate standing on its own, such as a one-day sentence for a violent crime. This was likely the district court's approach in Slatten. The circuit court turned the Dean holding on its head. Under Dean, sentencing judges may consider lengthy § 924(c) mandatory sentences and account for them with lenience in their discretionary sentences. But in Slatten, the circuit court refused to consider the lenience of the discretionary sentences in its proportionality analysis of the mandatory § 924(c) sentences. It reviewed the mandatory sentences "on their own - and not as part of a combined package."

The defendants themselves presented the court with another option: the court could have held that § 924(c)'s mandatory thirty-year sentence is categorically disproportionate for defendants using government-issued weapons in a war zone. Slatten, 865 F.3d at 811; cf. Noah A. Kuschel, Note, Exempting Police from 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), 51 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1609, 1612 (2010) (proposing that police officers be exempted from § 924(c) when they are authorized to carry the firearm and are performing official duties). Although the court declined to address this argument, it in some ways fits better with the majority's reasoning. At each step of the Eighth Amendment analysis, the court emphasized the defendants' status as military contractors using government-issued weapons in a war zone. A categorical Eighth Amendment holding would have also been in line with the majority's instinct to address the § 924(c) penalty separately, rather than as part of a sentencing package. If the holding were to apply to all war-zone cases, these particular defendants' manslaughter convictions would be irrelevant to the Eighth Amendment analysis. Within that framework, the tension between Slatten and Dean fades away. Just as the court wished, the defendants could individually "be held accountable for the death and destruction they unleashed" under their convictions for manslaughter, without "the sledgehammer of a mandatory 30-year sentence" under § 924(c).

In Slatten, the D.C. Circuit made several unusual moves to overturn the § 924(c) mandatory minimum sentences. Courts rarely even review non-death penalty sentences for proportionality. Those that are reviewed are almost always upheld, even when the crimes are less serious and the sentences are harsher than those in Slatten. And finally, the court considered the proportionality of the thirty-year § 924(c) sentence separately from the one-day sentence for the remainder of the defendants' crimes, creating tension with Dean, where the Supreme Court explicitly endorsed the "sentencing package" approach. A better way to achieve the same result would have been to sustain defendants' categorical Eighth Amendment challenge.

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Because they are not tailored to individual defendants' culpability, mandatory minimum sentences are ripe targets for Eighth Amendment challenges. In Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), "two strands of precedent reflecting . . . concern with proportionate punishment" came together: first, categorical mismatches between a class of defendants (frequently juveniles) and sentencing practices; and second, prohibitions on mandatory capital punishment.

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Freedom of speech and religion

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Why is the First Amendment important? | Washington University

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Right to own a gun and protect themselves.

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News about the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Commentary and archival information about the Second Amendment from The New York Times.

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Trial with a jury.

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On February 28 th, President Donald Trump gave an amazing speech to the American people, during a joint session of Congress. While everyone gives the speech the good marks it deserves, there was one disturbing part of the speech.

President Trump called for tort reform, which means the demise of the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Most Americans can identify only a few of the Amendments of the Bill of Rights. Most know the First, Second and famously the Fifth Amendment and the right to remain silent. Most people could not even tell you what the Third Amendment is (not being required to quarter troops in homes, except in cases of war) and the Seventh Amendment (the right to a civil jury trial).

The right to a jury trial is probably the most important right given to us in the Constitution. How do we know this? It is the only right specifically mentioned in two of the amendments to the Constitution. The right to a jury trial in a criminal case is granted in the Sixth Amendment and the right to a jury trial in a civil case is guaranteed in the Seventh Amendment.

Unfortunately, President Trump has bought into the myth of the frivolous lawsuit. Frivolous lawsuits are a fable made up by the Chamber of Commerce and big insurance, which want to deny citizens their day in court. Lawyers don't file frivolous lawsuits because they don't make money from them. Lawyers can and sometimes are sanctioned for filing a lawsuit that is deemed to be frivolous.

America's founding fathers revered the jury trial system, for both the civil and criminal case. In 1751, in South Carolina, the state legislature declared that "any person who shall endeavor to deprive us of so glorious a privilege of trial by jury," was an enemy of the people.

In 1776, George Mason wrote in Virginia's Declaration of Rights, "The ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other and ought to be held sacred." It is held sacred, except by the big business corporatists who believe that rights exist only for the corporate elites and not for the average American citizen.

Unfortunately for the Seventh Amendment, it has few defenders in Congress. The biggest defender of the Seventh Amendment is the trial lawyers association, which means no one in Washington is defending the Seventh Amendment. The trial lawyers long ago became little more than a fund-raising arm for the Democrat Party, abandoning any pretense of working with Republicans.

Today, they stumble through the halls of Congress like newly castrated cattle, trying to figure out what they lost and why it was important. It is tragic that the defense of one of the most important constitutional rights Americans have, falls to a group that is so comically ineffective.

The only other defense of the Seventh Amendment comes from the House Freedom Caucus. This liberty-minded group in the House of Representatives has risen to the defense of the Seventh Amendment before. But with the House Freedom Caucus consisting of only thirty-two members, out of the 237 Republicans in Congress, it is really questionable how much they can do.

Millions of Americans, including recently President Trump, have said, "I'll see you in court." If Tort Reform is adopted, it will be the beginning of the end for the Seventh Amendment and the right of Americans to sue.

Thomas Jefferson said, "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."

President Trump would do well to heed the words of President Jefferson and abandon the unconstitutional idea of Tort Reform.

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Trump tort reform threatens the 7th Amendment

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On February 28 th, President Donald Trump gave an amazing speech to the American people, during a joint session of Congress. While everyone gives the speech the good marks it deserves, there was one disturbing part of the speech. President Trump called for tort reform, which means the demise of the Seventh Amendment to the U.S.

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No soldiers are allowed to invite themselves into peoples houses.

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Why Was The Third Amendment Added To The Constitution

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People have the right to be secure in their persons. Have to have permission to go on peoples property, and a search warrant.

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Right to have a lawyer. No double jeopardy and the right to remain silent.

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WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court considered on Monday whether to allow lawsuits claiming abuse of police power in retaliation for exercising free speech rights. The case concerned a claim for retaliatory arrest at a festival in a remote part of Alaska, but several justices seemed to have an array of controversies in mind.

"You can think of it," Justice Elena Kagan said, "as a case where an individual police officer, you know, decides to arrest for jaywalking somebody wearing a 'Black Lives Matter' T-shirt or, alternatively, a 'Make America Great Again' cap."

Some courts have said the existence of probable cause for the arrest - the person was, after all, jaywalking - is always enough to bar lawsuits claiming retaliation in violation of the First Amendment. Others have allowed juries to decide whether the officers involved intended to suppress protected speech.

The Supreme Court has been struggling to find a line separating two kinds of arrests, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said, noting that "there are a range of cases."

At one extreme, he said, were people arrested after mouthing off to the police in heated and confusing settings.On the other, were serious abuses. "A journalist has written something critical of the police department," he said. Some time later, that hypothetical journalist, he said, was arrested for exceeding the speed limit by five miles per hour.

Justice Alito suggested that the Supreme Court would have a difficult time fashioning a standard that would bar the first kind of suit but allow the second one.

"Which of these unattractive rules should we adopt?" he asked.

The case argued Monday arose from an encounter at the Arctic Man ski and snowmobile event in the remote Hoodoo Mountains of interior Alaska. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. suggested that the setting alone should give officers some leeway.

"You've got 10,000 mostly drunk people in the middle of nowhere and you've got eight police officers," he said.

The plaintiff, Russell P. Bartlett, was arrested after yelling at police officers and refusing to answer questions. Afterward, Mr. Bartlett said, one officer told him, "Bet you wish you would have talked to me now."

He was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, but prosecutors dropped the charges, saying it was too expensive to pursue them given the distances involved. Mr. Bartlett sued, saying he had been arrested for exercising his First Amendment rights.

Justice Alito suggested that Mr. Bartlett's statements were not especially worthy of protection.

"Did your client say anything that was of social importance?" Justice Alito asked Zane D. Wilson, a lawyer for Mr. Bartlett. "He's not protesting some social issue or making some important point. He's involved in a personal dispute with a police officer.

Mr. Wilson disagreed. "The right to criticize a police officer," he said, is "one of the distinguishing features between a police state and a free country."

The case, Nieves v. Bartlett, No. 17-1174, was the court's third attempt to answer the thorny question of whether the existence of probable cause was always enough to defeat a lawsuit claiming retaliatory arrest.

In June, the court ruled that Fane Lozman, a critic of a Florida city who was arrested at a City Council meeting, could pursue a case for retaliatory arrest, but only because the city appeared to have had an established and official policy of harassing him.

In 2006, the court ruled in Hartman v. Moore that government officials could not be sued under the First Amendment for retaliatory prosecutions where there was probable cause to pursue the prosecution. The question on Monday was whether the same rule should apply to arrests.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer seemed eager to find a compromise that would allow dismissal of many suits at an early stage but allow ones with substantial, objective proof that officers intended to retaliate.

Justice Breyer added that allowing such suits could have unpredictable consequences, among them the possibility that police officers "will be very careful and not arrest people whom they should arrest."

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Supreme Court Considers a Thorny Question of Free Speech and Police Power

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WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court considered on Monday whether to allow lawsuits claiming abuse of police power in retaliation for exercising free speech rights. The case concerned a claim for retaliatory arrest at a festival in a remote part of Alaska, but several justices seemed to have an array of controversies in mind.

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Speedy public trial.

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Supreme Court Rules Right to Speedy Trial Ends at Guilty Verdict (Published 2016)

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The case concerned Brandon T. Betterman, who spent 14 months after pleading guilty to jumping bail in a Montana jail waiting to hear his sentence.