Supreme Court of the United States, 2016

The Court resolved two questions created by the parties' failures to object below. It held that a sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenge in a criminal case is measured against the elements of the charged crime, not against an unobjected-to jury instruction that erroneously adds an element, because a jury instructed on…

Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Scalia, dissents from the Court’s decision that state and federal post‑conviction courts must give retroactive effect to new substantive constitutional rules.

The Court held that it had jurisdiction to review Louisiana’s refusal to apply a new substantive constitutional rule in state collateral proceedings, and that Miller’s prohibition on mandatory life without parole for juvenile offenders announced such a rule.

Justice Sotomayor dissents, arguing that the Supreme Court should not have granted certiorari to review the Kansas Supreme Court's vacatur of three death sentences and that no federal constitutional right was violated.

The Court held that when an ERISA-plan participant wholly dissipates a third-party settlement on nontraceable items, the plan fiduciary may not bring suit under §502(a)(3) to attach the participant’s separate assets because such recovery is a legal remedy, not equitable.

The Court reversed the Kansas Supreme Court's decisions vacating Gleason's and Carrs' death sentences. It held the Eighth Amendment does not require instructions that mitigating circumstances need not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, nor does it require severance of joint capital sentencing proceedings.

The Court held that a plan fiduciary cannot sue under ERISA § 502(a)(3) to attach a participant’s general assets when the participant has dissipated the entire settlement on non‑traceable items, because such a suit is not "appropriate equitable relief." The judgment of the Eleventh Circuit was reversed and the case…

The Supreme Court held that the monthly installment filing‑fee provisions of 28 U.S.C. §1915(b)(2) are to be applied on a per‑case basis, not on a per‑prisoner basis, and therefore affirmed the District of Columbia Circuit’s judgment.

Justice Alito dissents, arguing that the majority wrongly overruled Hildwin and Spaziano, that Ring v. Arizona does not dictate the constitutionality of Florida's capital sentencing scheme, and that any Sixth Amendment error would be harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.

The Court held that Florida’s capital sentencing scheme violates the Sixth Amendment because a judge, not a jury, must find each fact necessary to impose the death penalty; the Florida Supreme Court’s judgment was reversed and the case remanded.