Due Process

Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015)

The residual clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act is unconstitutionally vague. The residual clause triggers ACCA sentencing if the defendant, convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm has three or more previous convictions for a “violent felony,” a term defined to include any felony that “involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.” 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B). The Court, having struggled with this definition for over a decade, finally decided that it was simply too vague.

City of Chicago v. Morales, 119 S.Ct. 1849 (1999)

Chicago's anti-gang loitering statute is unconstitutionally vague. The statute made it a crime to disobey a police officer's dispersal order, which must be directed to any person the officer believes to be a gang member or persons standing with such people, if they are loitering in any public place with no apparent purpose. The Court held that the statute was unconstitutionally vague because it failed to provide sufficient guidance to police officers to prevent arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.

Lawrence v. Texas, 123 S. Ct. 2472 (2003)

Consensual sodomy between adults in the privacy of their home may not be outlawed. Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), was overruled.

United States v. Williams, 128 S.Ct. 1830 (2008)

The Supreme Court upheld the child pornography pandering provision that had earlier been held unconstitutional by the Eleventh Circuit. The statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(3)(B) makes it a crime to solicit, or to offer to sell or distribute material that is purported to be child pornography. The Court rejected the defendant’s claim that it violates the First Amendment to make it a crime to offer to sell or distribute material as child pornography, if, in fact, the material being offered for sale is not, in fact, child pornography. The Court also rejected a Fifth Amendment vagueness challenge.

United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259 (1997)

There are three manifestations of the requirement that criminal statutes give “fair warning” of what is outlawed. First, the vagueness doctrine bars enforcement of a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application. Second, the doctrine insists that any ambiguity in a criminal statute must be resolved in favor of applying the statute only to conduct which is clearly covered. Third, although clarity may be applied by judicial gloss, due process bars courts from applying a novel construction of a criminal statute to conduct that neither the statute nor any prior judicial decision has fairly disclosed to be within its scope.

Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada, 501 U.S. 1030 (1991)

A state bar rule which prohibits an attorney from making certain extrajudicial statements to the press was void for vagueness.

MacDonald v. Moose, 710 F.3d 154 (4th Cir. 2013)

Based on the decision in Lawrence v. Texas, the Virginia statute that outlaws sodomy is unconstitutional.

Magwood v. Warden, Alabama Dept. of Corrections, 664 F.3d 1340 (11th Cir. 2011)

The novel interpretation of Alabama’s aggravating circumstance law (which renders certain murders to be death-eligible), amounted to a “fair-warnning” violation, which essentially provides that a defendant must have fair warning of the elements of a criminal offense and a novel interpretation of the law by an appellate court after the defendant’s conduct occurs that renders the conduct illegal, is a Due Process violation (not unlike an Ex Post Facto violation). See Rogers v. Tennessee, 532 U.S. 451 (2001); Bouie v. Cuity of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347 (1964).

Clark v. Brown, 450 F.3d 898 (9th Cir. 2006)

The state appellate court’s reinterpretation of the felony murder statute in California, and the retroactive application of that interpretation (thus making the defendant death-eligible) violated the defendant’s due process rights.

Richey v. Mitchell, 395 F.3d 660 (6th Cir. 2005)

Although a statute may be made clear by judicial gloss, due process bars courts from applying a novel construction of a criminal statute to conduct that neither the statute nor any prior judicial decision has fairly disclosed to be within its scope. See also United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259 (1997).

United States v. Albertini, 830 F.2d 985 (9th Cir. 1987)

The defendant was a frequent protester for nuclear disarmament at military bases on “open house” days. After one conviction, the Ninth Circuit held that his conduct was protected by the First Amendment. He continued to engage in these protests, in reliance on the Ninth Circuit decision and was again arrested. Subsequently, the United States Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Ninth Circuit. In the subsequent prosecution, the Court held that he had the right to rely on the Ninth Circuit decision and the prosecution was barred. A later Ninth Circuit decision overruled Albertini, on the basis of the Supreme Court decision in United States v. Rodgers, 466 U.S. 475 (1984). United States v. Qualls, 172 F.3d 1136 (9th Cir. 1999).