{"id":192,"date":"2026-06-15T18:39:44","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T18:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=192"},"modified":"2026-06-15T18:39:44","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T18:39:44","slug":"court-agrees-to-hear-three-new-cases-including-on-the-constitutionality-of-six-person-juries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=192","title":{"rendered":"Court agrees to hear three new cases, including on the constitutionality of six-person juries"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Supreme Court on Monday added three new cases, on issues ranging from hearings for noncitizens in immigration detention to the constitutionality of Florida\u2019s six-person juries and the exceptions to the general rule on second petitions for federal post-conviction relief. The announcement came as part of a from the justices\u2019 June 11 conference, which also included two dissents by Justice Samuel Alito from the denial of review in cases involving student speech and the constitutionality of a prosecutor\u2019s comments in a capital murder trial.<\/p>\n

Read more The dissent that became a statute<\/a><\/p>\n

In Genalo v. Black<\/em>, the court will weigh in on the case of Keisy G.M., a green card holder from the Dominican Republic who was taken into custody in October 2020 by immigration officials after he was convicted of assault and remained there for 21 months while the federal government sought to deport him. G.M. was eventually released under an order issued by another court, but his challenge to his detention continued. In 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit that when a noncitizen\u2019s detention has been \u201cunreasonably prolonged,\u201d the government must hold a bond hearing to determine whether a noncitizen is either a flight risk or a danger to the community, and the government must justify the continued detention by \u201cclear and convincing evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration in January. It noted that in 2018, in Jennings v. Rodriguez<\/em>, the Supreme Court had rejected an argument that noncitizens held in detention while the government sought to deport them were entitled under federal law to periodic hearings to consider whether to release them on bail. But in that case, it did not resolve the two questions that the government was now asking it to decide: whether there is in fact a point at which a noncitizen\u2019s detention becomes \u201cunreasonably prolonged,\u201d so that he has a constitutional right to a hearing; and whether, at such a hearing, a \u201cclear and convincing evidence\u201d standard applies.<\/p>\n

The court agreed to take up the case on Monday, although it directed the litigants to brief an additional question ( in opposing review) \u2013 whether the case is moot (that is, no longer a live controversy) because G.M. was released from custody in 2022 and the government has that he \u201cremains free and at this point there is \u2026 nothing else for the Court to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The justices also agreed to take up the case of Hamed Kian, who was convicted by a six-person jury of five counts of practicing chiropractic medicine with a suspended license. He was sentenced to one year and one day in prison on three of the counts and five years on probation for the remaining two counts.<\/p>\n

Kian argued unsuccessfully in a state appeals court that under the Sixth Amendment he was entitled to a 12-person jury. He the Supreme Court in January, asking the justices to weigh in. He conceded that in 1970, in , the court ruled that the use of a six-person jury does not violate the Constitution. But Kian urged the court to overrule that decision. Williams<\/em>, he said, acknowledged that the Constitution\u2019s drafters may have expected a jury to have 12 members, but it believed that a six-person jury could be equally effective in carrying out the jury\u2019s function \u2013 that is, allowing a group of ordinary citizens to determine a defendant\u2019s guilt or innocence.<\/p>\n

Kian argued that the current Supreme Court has discarded the reasoning on which the decision in Williams<\/em> rested. In 2020, in Ramos v. Louisiana<\/em>, he said, the court ruled that the Sixth Amendment requires a unanimous verdict, pointing to the meaning of the right to trial by jury when the amendment was adopted. \u201cRamos<\/em>,\u201d Kian wrote in his petition for review, \u201crejected the same kind of \u2018cost-benefit analysis\u2019 undertaken in Williams<\/em>, observing that it is not for the court to \u2018distinguish between the historic features of common law jury trials that (we think) serve \u201cimportant enough functions to migrate silently into the Sixth Amendment and those that don\u2019t.\u201d\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Alabama responds to court\u2019s order on nitrogen gas execution<\/a><\/p>\n

And in Guerrero v. Johnson<\/em>, the court granted to decide a technical question in a death-row inmate\u2019s effort to obtain federal post-conviction relief \u2013 specifically, whether his claim that he is intellectually disabled and therefore cannot be executed falls within one of the narrow exceptions in which a state prisoner can file a second petition for federal post-conviction relief when, the state argued, he could have raised the claim in an earlier petition. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit allowed Dexter Johnson\u2019s claim to go forward, agreeing with Johnson that he could not have made the claim earlier because the standards to evaluate intellectual disability claims had recently been revised.<\/p>\n

Over Alito\u2019s dissent, the court in Alabama v. Powell<\/em> let stand a ruling by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals \u2013 the state\u2019s highest court for criminal cases \u2013 that threw out the conviction and death sentence of Michael Powell. The a statement by a prosecutor at Powell\u2019s trial as a \u201cdirect comment\u201d on Powell\u2019s failure to testify, which would violate both the bar in the U.S. and Alabama Constitutions on compelling a criminal defendant to testify against himself.<\/p>\n

In a joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, Alito emphasized that the trial court had \u201cinterpreted the prosecutor\u2019s statement as a reference to\u201d a \u201cfalse confession letter,\u201d rather than a comment on Powell\u2019s failure to testify. In Alito\u2019s view, the state court\u2019s ruling conflicted with United States v. Robinson<\/em>, a 1988 decision in which the Supreme Court \u201cfound no violation of the Fifth Amendment right against compulsory self-incrimination in a case with very similar facts.\u201d Therefore, Alito said, he would have reversed the state court\u2019s ruling without additional briefing or oral argument.<\/p>\n

Alito also penned a dissent (this time, a solo one) from the court\u2019s denial of review in E.D. v. Noblesville School District<\/em>, a challenge by an Indiana teenager to her school\u2019s denial of her request to post flyers for \u201cthe student-run Noblesville Students for Life\u201d club that contained pictures of students with \u201cDefund Planned Parenthood\u201d signs. The student, known as E.D. in court filings, contended that the denial (as well as a suspension of the club that followed) violated the First Amendment, but the lower courts rejected that argument, and on Monday the court refused to hear E.D.\u2019s appeal.<\/p>\n

In a , Alito observed that a \u201cpivotal\u201d question in the case was whether courts should apply the stringent standard outlined in the court\u2019s 1969 decision in , in which the court held that the suspension of students for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War violated the First Amendment, or instead the lower bar for \u201cschool-sponsored\u201d speech and activities established in the 1988 case of Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier<\/em>. Since the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling in Hazelwood<\/em>, Alito continued, \u201clower courts have struggled to ascertain its precise limits, and in my view, clarification by this Court is in order.\u201d In particular, Alito said, he would have granted E.D.\u2019s petition for review to \u201cclarify the relationship between Hazelwood<\/em>\u201d and the Supreme Court\u2019s cases on government speech.<\/p>\n

The court on Monday also denied several notable petitions for review, including:<\/p>\n