Miller v. California was one of the first attempts to define what would constitute as obscene matter in the eyes of the law. The prosecution came about because Miller started a mail campaign to advertise the sale of adult material. Some of the recipients found the material offensive and alerted the local police. This distribution was found in violation of a California act prohibiting the distribution of obscene material. The court case decided that obscene materials did not fall under the protection of the First Amendment in a 5-to-4 decision. Miller v. California also lead to the modification of both Roth v. United States and Memoirs v. Massachusetts, which was a case that had originally set the tests for obscenity. This case set the standards
A muddy shoe print was use to link an unnamed man who was on the run from the police to his vehicle which was carrying 3 ½ pounds of marijuana. Police detective Chad Larner attempted to pull over this man in a Mazda for speeding but he would not stop. The man was eventually able to lose Larner. He then parked the car, got out and tried to hide. The police later found the car and found the man two blocks away. He attempted to bribe a young woman to walk with him by saying that he would give her $40. The woman told the police that he told her that he was in a police chase in which he was not the driver and he was trying to hide from the police. When the police searched the car they found four bags of the 3 ½ pounds of marijuana. The police also
The court rejects the previous test used to decide Free Exercise cases, the Sherbert test. The state no longer had to prove a “compelling interest” for legislation nor that it was the “least restrictive means” of regulation.
THE COURT SHOULD FIND THAT THE SEARCHING OFFICERS WERE UNREASONABLE IN THEIR BELIEF THAT HIS COTENANT HAD APPARENT AUTHORITY TO CONSENT TO THE SEARCH BECAUSE HER ANSWERS TO THEIR QUESTIONS CREATED AMBIGUITY AND THEY DID NOT RESOLVE THAT AMBIGUITY.
Yes, each state should apply the Supreme Court ruling of Miller v. Alabama retroactively. There were two cases reviewed by the Supreme Court that determined their ruling. Evan Miller and his friend Colby Smith robbed, assaulted, and murdered Cole Cannon on July 15, 2003. Miller and Smith, age fourteen had been drinking and doing drugs the night the incident occurred. Miller and Cannon got into a fight over Miller stealing money from Cannon that lead to Miller repeatedly striking him with a baseball bat. After placing a sheet on Cannon and before striking him in the head for the last time, Miller states “I am God, I’ve come to take your life” (“Supreme Court”, 2011). To destroy the evidence, Miller and Smith set Cannon’s trailer on fire and left him to die.
At the end of the hearing on June 21st, 1973, the court ruled that while obscene material is not protected by the First Amendment, various states have different regulations for the sale and distribution of certain material. The state of California has regulations and criteria for this form of expression, but it is a lot of steps to go through to get the
I attend the United States VS. Miller case; this case was the last one in a series of multiple case that have taken overtime, and the judge would come to rule over the defendant on whether he is going to be staying in custody or be able to be on parole with an ankle monitor.
Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984) was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that set the standard for determining whether a criminal defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel is violated by a lawyer's alleged incompetence during trial. On September 25,1789 the Sixth Amendment was introduced into the United States Constitution as part of the Bill of Rights, and on December 15, 1791 it was ratified. The Sixth Amendment guarantees a defendant the right “[T]o have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.”
It is unlikely for Computin to be able to successfully suppress the evidence against him considering any avenue he could take would all be invalidated under the FISA Amendments act, specifically Section 702. One such avenue is claiming his Fourth Amendment rights were violated. Under the Fourth Amendment one can expect a “reasonable expectation of privacy” that is both subjective and objective. If Computin expected his laptop to be private and if society would also agree that such privacy is reasonable, he can claim that the court violated his Fourth Amendment Rights. Many cases have seen people try but fail to invoke their Fourth Amendment rights. In the legal case of Riley v. California, Riley moved to suppress evidence that was obtained without a warrant, citing his Fourth Amendment rights that prevented warrantless searches. Even though this was a physical procedure that is different from the manner in which
In the decision of the Miller V Oregon case the supreme court recognized the need for facts and not only legal arguments to establish the judgement of social legislation. Louis Brandeis the chief counsel for the state of Oregon used social science data to prove the judgement of Oregon's law to restrict the hours a woman could
Facts: John Doe was arrested in Marion County in 2000 and convicted of two counts of child exploitation. A recent Indiana statute prohibits most registered sex offenders from using social networking websites, instant messaging services, and chat programs. He was released from prison in 2003 and was required to register as a sex offender under this Indiana law. John Doe, on behalf of a class of similarly situated sex offenders, challenges this law on First Amendment grounds and files suit against Marion County. The district court held that the law implicates Doe's
District of Columbia v. Heller is a Supreme Court case that was heard in 2008 by the court. The respondent was a D. C. special police officer who was authorized to carry a handgun while on duty. The respondent, Heller, filed a lawsuit to challenge District of Columbia handgun laws that prohibited the carrying of handguns without a license and requirements that licensed firearms kept in homes must be kept nonfunctional.
The distinction between an act and a status would be best described by the case of Robinson v California in which the California statute makes it an offense for a person to “be addicted to the use of narcotics” (Brody and Acker, 2010). The actual act would be using the narcotics which is usually a criminal offense. However, the status would be addicted to narcotics. Just because someone is addicted to narcotics does not mean it is a criminal offense. Just the fact that they use the narcotics is.
The Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case circled around the fact that the Southern Pacific Railway company was being taxed for the fences owned by the company. However, the company responded to this taxation by stating that the fences were not a segment or part of the company’s roadway. The question posed by the court asked if California’s Constitution permitted the state, “to increase property taxes against railroad companies when the companies added additional value to the property of building fences” (Oyez). The county relied on its statement, that the railroad company could be taxed for the additional value of fences it produced, due to the fact that the company was already being taxed for the land.
The United States Supreme Court consists of eight associate justices and one chief justice who are petitioned more than 5,000 times a year to hear various cases (Before the Court in Miller V. Alabama, 2012). At its discretion, the Supreme Court selects which cases they choose to review. Some of the selected cases began in the state court system and others began in the federal court system. On June 25, 2012 the justices of the Supreme Court weighed in on the constitutionality of life without parole for juvenile offenders. The case was Miller v. Alabama and actually included another case, Jackson v Hobbs, as well (2012). Both were criminal cases involving 14 year old boys who were
The court took into consideration the complications of applying the Roth standard and took that opportunity to establish a new foundation by which we could easier classify obscenity. We know this today as the Miller test and it uses the following to determine what material should be considered obscene, “whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would conclude that the dominant theme of the material as a whole appeals to prurient interest; whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law; and whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value”. Even though these guidelines have been set, there still continues to be an overwhelming amount of difficulty applying them because of their subjectivity. Countless obscenity statues have been successfully challenged based on the grounds that they are void because of their