October 29, 2019

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Tuesday 10/29, I handed back the exams, and we went over them. I distributed one handout, excerpts from the Maine and federal statutes about hindering apprehension, common law crimes, duty to report crimes, etc. We started going over Gregg v. Georgia, and last week's handout about the story of the capital punishment cases. We got through the Stewart plurality opinion, and will pick up on Thursday with the dissents.
The assignment for Thursday 10/31 is to review the dissents in Gregg, read in the text through p. 67 (including Mobbley and Holland) and read today's statutory handout.


POS 484 CRIMINAL DUE PROCESS
In class today, Tuesday 10/29, I distributed one handout, an article about the upcoming Supreme Court argument in Kansas v. Glover, involving the definition of reasonable suspicion in the context of suspended licenses. We then turned to Mitchell v. Wisconsin, whose outline is due next Thursday 11/7. I went through the three theories of why warrantless blood alcohol tests may be reasonable: search incident to arrest; implied consent; and exigency. We saw how, for blood tests, search incident to arrest had already been foreclosed. We also saw how the Court plurality in Mitchell decided not to rule on the implied consent issue, and to instead tackle exigency. We looked at the previous exigency/drunk driving case, Missouri v. McNeely, how the plurality dealt with McNeely, and how the dissent disagreed with the plurality. We looked at the breakdown of the votes in both McNeely and Mitchell, and saw how a change in Court personnel made all the difference, as none of the Justices really changed what side they were on.
The assignment for Thursday 10/31 is to read in the text pp. 200-205, including Arizona v. Gant, as well as reading today's handout.