Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every
Speaker 1: day we bring you insight an analysis into the most
Speaker 1: important legal news of the day. You can find more
Speaker 1: episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,
Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. It's a decades
Speaker 1: long legal saga that hasn't ended yet. Today, the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court throughout the death sentence of a Mississippi man convicted
Speaker 1: at his sixth trial for a quadruple murder after the
Speaker 1: prosecutor repeatedly excluded black people from the jury, but he
Speaker 1: can be tried again for a seventh time. Joining me
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg New Supreme Court reporter Greg stop So. Greg
Speaker 1: this involved what's called peremptory challenges to a jury, so
Speaker 1: lawyers can strike jurors without stating a reason explain what
Speaker 1: happened here. So what happened here is that the man,
Speaker 1: Curtis Flowers, was try six different times for the same
Speaker 1: uh crimes the murders from and prosecutors in those six
Speaker 1: trials actually the same prosecutor, District Attorney Doug Evans, used
Speaker 1: peremptory challenges to strike forty one out of forty two
Speaker 1: prospective black jurors from those UH jury panels, and the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court looked at this case and said, you know,
Speaker 1: if you look at the history of it, um, it's
Speaker 1: clear that that he has used race intentionally, and so
Speaker 1: we're going to throw out his latest conviction. Now, the
Speaker 1: the in the dissent were Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorcich.
Speaker 1: And this was a case where Justice Thomas actually asked
Speaker 1: a question. He did. Yes, this was Justice Thomas almost
Speaker 1: never asked questions. In this one. At the very end
Speaker 1: of the argument, he asked whether he asked Mr Flowers's
Speaker 1: attorney whether his lawyer at trial had exercised perempty peremptory
Speaker 1: challenges as well to strike white jerors from the panel. Now,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court has has said that the problem, uh
Speaker 1: is not that defendants are using peremptory challenges in a
Speaker 1: discriminatory manner. The thing we're worried about here is prosecutors
Speaker 1: doing that, because that would mean a criminal defendant may
Speaker 1: not be getting a fair trial. UM. This came up
Speaker 1: in his Justice Thomas's descent UH to a small degree um. Uh.
Speaker 1: He is a very strongly worded descent um, in which
Speaker 1: he ended by saying that, Um, the Court's opinion might
Speaker 1: boost it self esteem, but it needlessly prolongs the suffering
Speaker 1: of the four victims families. He said, the only redeeming
Speaker 1: quality of the opinion was that Mississippi can prosecute flowers again,
Speaker 1: which it can, and UH, we'll wait to find out
Speaker 1: whether or not it will do so now. In another case,
Speaker 1: in a five to four decision along ideological lines, the
Speaker 1: Court overturned to more than thirty year old precedent and
Speaker 1: made it easier for landowners to sue for compensation when
Speaker 1: a government regulation reduces the value of their property. What
Speaker 1: happened here, So this has to do with the Constitution's
Speaker 1: taking clause, which says that, UM, the government can't take
Speaker 1: your property without giving you just compensation. Um. And the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court in the past had said, UM, if you're
Speaker 1: trying to vindicate your rights under that, you first have
Speaker 1: to deal with the state court system. And sometimes a
Speaker 1: property owner thinks that he or she doesn't get as
Speaker 1: good as a shake in the state court system. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was the case involving a woman who owns some
Speaker 1: rural property in Pennsylvania. There's a local ordinance that UM
Speaker 1: and her property apparently has a very old cemetery on it,
Speaker 1: and there's a local ordinance that now says that she
Speaker 1: has to provide open access to that for people who
Speaker 1: want to visit the cemetery. And the question for the
Speaker 1: court was, did she have to go through the state
Speaker 1: court system to attempt to get compensation for what you
Speaker 1: said is a decrease in the value of her property?
Speaker 1: Or can't she go straight to the federal court? In
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court throwing out a precedent, said she can
Speaker 1: go straight to federal court. Now. Justice Elena Kagan wrote
Speaker 1: in a sharply worded dissent for the UH for justices
Speaker 1: that the decision smashes a hundred years Excuse me, the
Speaker 1: decision smashes a hundred plus years of legal rulings to
Speaker 1: smithereens Why were the liberal justices lined up in the
Speaker 1: minority in this case? Well, so, there are several things
Speaker 1: going on here. Uh. First, these claims, these takings claims
Speaker 1: and seeking just compensation are are a type that conservatives
Speaker 1: have traditionally been more sympathetic towards UM. But the the
Speaker 1: liberals on the court Supreme Court these days are clearly
Speaker 1: quite worried about where things are headed. The Court UH
Speaker 1: several weeks ago overturned the precedent involving sovereign immunity. That
Speaker 1: was the one that left Justice Stephen Bryer Um saying
Speaker 1: today's decision can only cause one to wonder which cases
Speaker 1: the Court will overrule next. And Justice Kagan, in her
Speaker 1: descent today um invoked that statement and said, well, that
Speaker 1: didn't take long. Now one may wonder yet again. So
Speaker 1: the liberals are worried that the conservative block on the
Speaker 1: Court is going to move very quickly ahead to overturn precedents,
Speaker 1: potentially even getting into the precedents involving abortion. And yet
Speaker 1: during Supreme Court confirmation hearing is the one refrain that
Speaker 1: you always hear, is I am going to respect to precedent.
Speaker 1: It was. It was something that that Brett Kavanaugh talked
Speaker 1: an awful lot about. There is one more case that
Speaker 1: the Course gonna be deciding next week involving an important precedent.
Speaker 1: Um So far, just as Kavan haven't written anything separately
Speaker 1: to to really spell out his views about what he
Speaker 1: thinks about precedent in a Supreme Court opinion, and maybe
Speaker 1: we'll get it then one more week as you say. Now,
Speaker 1: also the court decided to hear a case that could
Speaker 1: upend the work of the oversight board that's tasks with
Speaker 1: pulling Puerto Rico out of its bankruptcy. Yes, this is
Speaker 1: something that happened yesterday. UM. This is a case where
Speaker 1: actually both sides wine the court to take it and
Speaker 1: decided fairly quickly. Uh. So the court is going to
Speaker 1: hear it in in October. What this is about, this
Speaker 1: is the board that is basically, UM doing all the
Speaker 1: work of of of trying to manage the bankruptcy proceedings
Speaker 1: in Puerto Rico, UH get the island back on sound
Speaker 1: financial footing. And the members of the board were appointed
Speaker 1: under provisions in a statute Congress passed a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago where UH President Obama picked the members for
Speaker 1: this board off a list submitted by lawmakers and bond
Speaker 1: holders who UH don't like what the board is doing,
Speaker 1: think they're not getting a big enough uh return on
Speaker 1: on the bonds that they hold. Sued to challenge the
Speaker 1: way the members were appointed. They said it violates the
Speaker 1: Constitution's Appointments clauset. In particular, they they say the Senate
Speaker 1: has to confirm these people. Um, a lower court said, yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: this does violate the appointments clause, but we're not going
Speaker 1: to invalidate all the stuff that the Board has done
Speaker 1: in the past. So now both sides are appealing that
Speaker 1: that the the Board and the Trump administration are asking
Speaker 1: the court to reinstate to say that the members were
Speaker 1: properly appointed, and the bond holders are asking the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court to say that we need to wipe out at
Speaker 1: least some of the decisions the Board has made in
Speaker 1: the past. All right, thanks so much, Greg, rest up
Speaker 1: this weekend because next week we have twelve cases, including
Speaker 1: the census question and part is in gerrymandering. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to the Bloomberg Law podcast. You can subscribe and
Speaker 1: listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is
Speaker 1: Bloomberg