Jae Lee came to the United States legally as a child but never became a citizen. In 2009, he pled guilty to a drug crime after his lawyer assured him that he could not be deported as a result. The lawyer was wrong, because the conviction made Lee subject to mandatory removal.

When Lee learned of this mistake, he asked the court to vacate his plea so he could instead face trial, arguing that his counsel’s assistance was ineffective. The district court denied this motion because of the overwhelming evidence against Lee, ruling that his conviction at trial was so certain that his counsel’s bad advice didn’t actually harm him, particularly given the much longer prison sentence he would receive if convicted after trial.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit agreed that a jury wasn’t needed to determine Lee’s guilt and that denying the “chance to throw a Hail Mary at trial is not prejudicial” and therefore doesn’t violate Lee’s Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. The court reasoned that that the only chance Lee had was acquittal by “jury nullification” and thus such a gambit was so irrational—and the idea of nullification so antiquated—that it is not to be allowed.

Lee is now pressing the matter at the Supreme Court, which has agreed to hear his argument, which Cato is supporting with this amicus brief. The idea of an independent jury’s nullification power is encompassed in the original meaning of the Sixth Amendment. Colonists frequently viewed juries as a shield against the crown, as juries frequently protected defendants against unjust and oppressive laws.

Independent juries were important enough in the American colonies that a section in the Declaration of Independence was devoted to assailing the King for depriving them of that right. The importance of an independent jury, and what such a jury meant at the time, informed the creation and adoption of the jury-trial right in the Bill of Rights. The meaning is made clear by Alexander Hamilton, who argued as defense counsel in 1804 that it is up to the jury to decide facts and the law, and it is in the deciding of the law that the nullification power comes from. The meaning is further solidified by John Adams’s statement that it is the duty of a jury “to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.”

The Sixth Circuit actually admits in this case that the power of juries to acquit, despite strong evidence for conviction, was central to the decision to enshrine the jury right in the Constitution. In spite of the incontrovertible evidence that the right to seek an acquittal by nullification was enshrined in the Sixth Amendment, Jae Lee had this right revoked simply because it was considered irrational or unwise.

The Supreme Court must now protect the right to pursue a risky trial strategy; it may not be wise to seek acquittal by nullification, but Lee should be able to decide that the risk is worth facing as against the certainty of deportation. It is not up to courts to pick which strategy is best for criminal defendants to follow, but judges should protect the right to choose a jury trial even when they might not make the same choice under the same circumstances.

The Supreme Court hears argument in Lee v. United States on March 28.

I’ve written previously on this blog regarding stingray devices: powerful surveillance tools which allow law enforcement agents to spy on the cell phones of unsuspecting Americans, often without judicial or legislative oversight.

For a deeper dive into the subject, I’ve put together a policy analysis detailing the past history, present issues, and future prospects of stingray devices and police surveillance more generally.

From the executive summary:

Police agencies around the United States are using a powerful surveillance tool to mimic cell phone signals to tap into the cellular phones of unsuspecting citizens, track the physical locations of those phones, and perhaps even intercept the content of their communications.

The device is known as a stingray, and it is being used in at least 23 states and the District of Columbia. Originally designed for use on the foreign battlefields of the War on Terror, “cell-site simulator” devices have found a home in the arsenals of dozens of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.

In addition, police agencies have gone to incredible lengths to keep information about stingray use from defense attorneys, judges, and the public. Through the use of extensive nondisclosure agreements, the federal government prevents state and local law enforcement from disclosing even the most elementary details of stingray capability and use. That information embargo even applies to criminal trials, and allows the federal government to order evidence withheld or entire cases dropped to protect the secrecy of the surveillance device.

The controversy around police stingray surveillance challenges our antiquated Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, undermines our cherished principles of federalism and separation of powers, exposes a lack of accountability and transparency among our law enforcement agencies, and raises serious questions about the security of our individual rights as the government’s technological capability rapidly advances.

The full analysis can be found here.

The interaction of law enforcement and surveillance technology promises to be one of the most important civil liberties issues of the near future. Our current privacy jurisprudence is sorely outdated and often inapplicable to the issues presented by modern technology and law enforcement practices.

Whether we’re talking about cell phone tracking, persistent aerial surveillance, or nationwide biometric databasing, the ability of the government to invade and regulate the most intimate spheres of our lives continues to grow. It is incumbent on policymakers and jurists to ensure that our legal framework and constitutional principles keep pace with these growing threats to our privacy.

For more on stingray surveillance, Cato will be hosting a policy forum on February 15, including remarks from Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R‑UT), who has authored legislation attempting to rein in surveillance abuses.

The leaders of the University of California at Berkeley lacked power to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking on their campus yesterday. A subset of the university’s faculty urged their Chancellor to do just that. His spokesman replied, “Our Constitution does not permit the university to engage in prior restraint of a speaker out of fear that he might engage in even hateful verbal attacks.”

Most protesters opposed the event peacefully. Some did not: “security officials claim about 150 ‘masked agitators’ joined the demonstration, setting fires, throwing molotov cocktails and rocks and attacking some members of the crowd.” Yiannopoulos’ speech was cancelled in the interest of public safety.

The faculty members seeking to censor Yiannopoulos did not cover themselves with glory, but the people resorting to violence were the true villains in this narrative. They achieved through violence what could not be achieved by law.

Of course, it is possible the university did not try very hard to hold the event. But the Chancellor faced down a part of his own faculty, and the Berkeley College Republicans thanked the university police and the administration “for doing all they could to ensure the safety of everyone involved.” It does not appear the administration came up short. To the contrary, they appear to have fulfilled their obligations. They deserve praise.

This morning President Trump tweeted “If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view — NO FEDERAL FUNDS?”

Notice U.C. Berkeley is the subject of both actions. But the Berkeley Chancellor supported the speech, and we have no evidence that he or any other person acting on behalf of Berkeley incited violence yesterday.

I do not see how attacking people who have observed constitutional norms will encourage others to also respect free speech.

Walter Olson has more on the federal funds aspect of all this.

On Friday, February 3, at noon, Cato will host a discussion of President Trump and free speech. You can register here or walk in tomorrow. 

A President may not find it simple or straightforward to use direct executive orders to cut off funds to universities that tolerate disruption of speech or exclude speakers based on the content of their speech. (That’s this morning’s Presidential tweet story, if you slept in.) But the power that the Department of Education and allied agencies have gathered to themselves over university life has steadily mounted, often against feeble resistance from the universities themselves, as in the Title IX instance. That gives an administration plenty of handles to make its will known, a process previewed in October, as to Trump, by Chronicle of Higher Education correspondent Steve Kolowich, who also spoke to me for the story. He quotes Alexander Holt, an education-policy analyst at New America, saying: “I could see a Trump administration going crazy on these ‘Dear Colleague’ letters.”

Two years ago I cited several examples of rule by Dear Colleague letter, as I called it, in this area. (More here.) And I noted one big problem with invoking judicial oversight to check the federal government’s power:

It may be difficult to persuade a college to serve as a test case, given the annihilating possibility of a federal funds cutoff as the penalty of its presumption.

University administrators have submitted meekly for years now to rule by federal “Dear Colleague” letter. Now it will be Trump appointees writing those letters. If the administrators wish to retain some measure of independence from control by Washington, D.C., they may need to grasp that the hour is growing late — and that it wasn’t such a good idea to grow dependent on the federal dollar in the first place. (adapted from Overlawyered). 

My first choice from the president’s fabulous list of terrific judges — they’re all winners, believe me (no really, solid list) — was probably the judiciary’s twitter laureate, Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett, but Judge Neil Gorsuch of the Tenth Circuit was right up there. As you can see by my statement to CNN, I’m pleased as punch with the selection. 

There’ll be time enough to analyze Judge Gorsuch’s work, but after reading a stack of his opinions over the weekend, the most salient parts of his judicial record are as follows:

1. A keen appreciation for constitutional structure as a guarantor of our rights and liberties.
2. A real devotion to originalism — probably more than the self-described “faint-hearted originalist” Antonin Scalia — and textualism.
3. Strong support for the freedom of speech and religion, and the First Amendment more broadly.
4. Skepticism of the administrative state.
5. Like Scalia, he construes criminal statutes narrowly, so people aren’t convicted and punished without the government’s meeting its evidentiary burden or establishing that it didn’t violate constitutional rights in arresting and prosecuting defendants.
6. Really, really good writing, which even Justice Elena Kagan has praised.

Gorsuch also maintains a good relationship with Cato and has published a Policy Analysis with us. In short, Donald Trump has managed to pick a nominee who should please everyone other than progressives: social conservatives, libertarians, legal elites, and I imagine the populists who trust him to pick “the best judges.” Left-wing activists are already talking about how Gorsuch is extreme and is anti-women, workers, yada yada — they have to raise money somehow — but I find it hard to see how Senate Democrats will muster 40 votes to sustain a filibuster against someone who was unanimously confirmed in 2006, particularly with a tough 2018 map.

For more analysis, see my short piece in the New York Post, plus Andrew Grossman and David Rivkin in the Wall Street Journal, as well as these excellent essays by Ramesh Ponnuru and Ed Whelan.

Following a day of feverish rumors to the contrary, the White House has flatly denied that it plans to reverse an Obama administration directive extending nondiscrimination protections to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender federal workers. “ ‘President Trump continues to be respectful and supportive of L.G.B.T.Q. rights, just as he was throughout the election,’ the White House said in a statement. “The president is proud to have been the first ever G.O.P. nominee to mention the L.G.B.T.Q. community in his nomination acceptance speech, pledging then to protect the community from violence and oppression.”

The White House did not rule out revisiting other decisions by its predecessor administration on gay rights, such as an order requiring federal contractors to adopt nondiscrimination policies, which pointedly did not provide conscience exemptions for private religious agencies. A year and a half ago in this space I myself took issue with what the Obama administration was up to on this front.

The effect of a contractor ban without religious objector provisions, I argued, would be to kick various religious agencies out of social service work in public settings in adoptions and foster care, as well as some prison, drug rehab, and various other settings. Ousting conservative religious groups from participation in social service adoption is likely to cut down on the number of successful placements made of children in public care, which would hurt the taxpayer, hurt adoptive parents, and, not least, hurt kids. The more genuinely pluralist approach, I argued, would be to acknowledge conscience exemptions while fully opening these systems to participation by contractors that gladly serve gays, persons of no given sect, religious unbelievers, and so forth. 

Further reaction is probably best postponed until things get past the rumor stage.