American Law’s Worst Moment—2020

AUSTIN SARAT

Austin Sarat—Associate Provost and Associate Dean of the Faculty and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence & Political Science at Amherst College—explains why the police murder of George Floyd was the worst moment of 2020 in American law. Professor Sarat proposes that we remember the event and that date—May 25—as “infamous,” a word reserved for rare and atrocious events like the bombing of Pearl Harbor, in an attempt to capture the brutality and inhumanity of the act.

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United States v. Raymundi-Hernandez

Dockets: 16-2490, 18-1076, 18-1528, 20-1385, 20-1438, 20-1402, 17-1081, 17-1092, 17-1314, 20-1405

Opinion Date: December 29, 2020

Judge: Per Curiam

Areas of Law: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law

The First Circuit vacated Defendants' convictions for their roles in an expansive drug-trafficking conspiracy, holding that the evidence was sufficient to support the convictions but the trial was rendered unfair due to repeated, one-sided intercessions by the trial judge. The primary challenge of all four defendants on appeal was that they were entitled to a new trial because, throughout the eleven-day jury trial, the district court judge interjected during witness testimony in a manner that signaled an anti-defense bias to the jury and caused Defendants prejudice. The First Circuit agreed, holding that the trial judge's perceptible partiality impaired the integrity and fairness of the trial and that this judicial misconduct infringed upon all Defendants' right to a fair trial.