For seven years, one case has languished before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Not letters from outside advocates, not status requests from attorneys, not a motion for a ruling from one party in the case has gotten the court to budge.
California has (or used to have) a law requiring judges’ pay to be suspended if they have any matters that were submitted for decision and not decided within 90 days. In order to receive their salary, they are supposed to complete an affidavit attesting that they have no cases pending for longer than the 90-day period. There are loopholes, but at least this kind of seven years crap doesn’t happen.
Totally aberrant.
They should totally just bus the sex offender to Pensacola and promise him cocaine and teenagers. Drop him off in front of Matt Gaet’z pad.
The California law still exists, but there are ways to get around it. It runs from the time a case is submitted, and time often is extended before that happens. An appellate justice in California recently agreed to retire after an investigation by the Commission on Judicial Performance found he personally had some responsibility for a few delayed cases and, although he was the Administrative Presiding Justice, he had failed to ensure that other cases still not decided way beyond the expected time were resolved.
This is a serious ethical issue, but unfortunately, ethical restrictions have blunt teeth, if they have teeth at all, in the federal courts. Maybe more publicity will stir some action. It’s hard to imagine what could cause this delay in an essentially single-issue case, except for some intransigence among the panel judges.
They’re still waiting for Leonard Leo to tell them how to rule on this case.
Isn’t it nice to have a judicial system totally corrupted by the Federalist Society?
I really hope they don’t spend that long thinking about the DOJ’s appeal of Cannon’s special master decision.
If they wait long enough, the plaintiff dies, the case is moot and the law evades review.
Soooo - let me guess. The White judges (good “Christians” all) know that they will have to rule in favor of the Black homeless guy - so they simply refuse to make a ruling.
Sounds like the only explanation.
Article fails to address the question of if the appeals court stayed the lower court’s decision pending the appeal (in which case the guy is still living under a bridge) or let the lower court’s decision stand (in which case he received relief from the onerous AL law, which has since been changed).
Justice, to me, sometimes seems slow as a glacier moving but this case … well… kinda proves my point. A case filed over a decade ago should have been resolved by now and sitting in one court for 7 years with no response… is just wrong. It should reflect on that court. Did they lose the paper work?
Here’s a guess: So someone here, one of the panel maybe, realizes what a cluster AL’s notice law is and doesn’t want to upset the MAGA/Q set by uprooting a law that’s supposed to protect the children from predators. These notice/registry laws are often problematic because they’re enacted by vindictive morons who don’t understand the Constitution.
The judges know it is unconstitutional under any reading of the constitution but they are unwilling to say so for fear of pissing off their political allies. Hence they have elected to set on it until the plaintiff dies. Politics comes to the judiciary.
I like how you think…
Kudos to Mr. Kovensky and TPM on the reporting, the kind of journalism that does not happen often enough.
Anyone named Jarndyce involved?
Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.
I would really like to hear what Joyce White Vance’s take on this case is – she’s Distinguished Professor of the Law from Practice at The University of Alabama School of Law, former United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, raiser of extraordinary chickens, and great knitter. She’s a very wise and witty person.
It’s beyond wrong. It’s shameful. And there’s no obvious reason for it, the judges just can’t seem to get their shit together.
Hell, it’s Alabama and these are white judges.
They don’t have to do anything they don’t want to for a black person.
That’s just the way it is down there.