Latest Case: Howard v. State (Criminal Law)

The Future of Faithless Electors and the National Popular Vote Compact: Part Two in a Two-Part Series

VIKRAM DAVID AMAR

In this second of a two-part series of columns about the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in the “faithless elector cases, Illinois Law dean and professor Vikram David Amar describes some good news that we may glean from those cases. Specifically, Amar points out that states have many ways of reducing elector faithlessness, and he lists three ways in which the Court’s decision paves the way for advances in the National Popular Vote (NPV) Interstate Compact movement.

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Impoverishing Women: Supreme Court Upholds Trump Administration’s Religious and Moral Exemptions to Contraceptive Mandate

JOANNA L. GROSSMAN

SMU Dedman School of Law professor Joanna L. Grossman comments on the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding the Trump administration’s religious and moral exemptions to the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Grossman provides a brief history of the conflict over the growing politicization of contraception in the United States and argues that the exemptions at issue in this case should never have been promulgated in the first place because they have no support in science or public policy.

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Howard v. State

Docket: W2018-00786-SC-R11-PC

Opinion Date: July 16, 2020

Judge: Page

Areas of Law: Criminal Law

The Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the court of criminal appeals concluding that Petitioner was entitled to postconviction relief based on trial counsel's failure to file a timely motion for new trial, holding that the postconviction court properly considered whether Petitioner was prejudiced by his trial counsel's deficiency, and the postconviction court did not err in concluding that Petitioner was not. In his postconviction petition, Petitioner claimed that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to timely file a motion for new trial. The postconviction court concluded that trial counsel was deficient but that Petitioner was not prejudiced. The court of appeals reversed, holding that Petitioner was presumptively prejudiced by his counsel's deficiency. The Supreme Court reversed, holding (1) trial counsel's failure to timely file a motion for new trial does not require a presumption of prejudice, and this Court's decision to the contrary in Wallace v. State. 121 S.W.3d 652 (Tenn. 2003), is overruled; and (2) the postconviction court in this case properly denied Petitioner's request for postconviction relief.