CentralTexasCrude wrote: ↑Mon Jun 27, 2022 6:22 pm
And the Supreme court continues to do it's business like it has for almost 250 years:
9-0
Nate Raymond
Mon, June 27, 2022, 9:53 AM
By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday made it harder for prosecutors to win convictions of doctors accused of running "pill mills" and excessively prescribing opioids and other addictive drugs by requiring the government to prove that defendants knew their prescriptions had no legitimate medical purpose.
The 9-0 ruling, authored by liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, sided with Xiulu Ruan and Shakeel Kahn, who argued that their trials were unfair because jurors were not required to consider whether the two convicted doctors had "good faith" reasons to believe the numerous opioid prescriptions were medically valid.
While both doctors were registered under the a U.S. law called the Controlled Substances Act to prescribe such drugs to their patients, prosecutors at their trials argued that the prescriptions fell outside the usual course of professional practice.
Breyer, who is retiring at the end of the court's current term in the coming days, wrote that once the doctors produced evidence that they were authorized to dispense drugs like opioids, prosecutors needed to prove they knowingly or intentionally acted in an unauthorized manner.
5-4
Associated Press
Supreme Court rules for inmates seeking reduced prison terms
Mon, June 27, 2022, 9:26 AM
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court made it easier Monday for certain prison inmates to seek shorter sentences under a bipartisan 2018 federal law aimed at reducing racial disparities in prison terms for cocaine crimes.
The justices ruled 5-4 that trial judges who are asked to resentence inmates may look at a wide range of factors, including some that have nothing to do with crack cocaine offenses that had produced longer stints in prison, disproportionately for people of color.
The high court settled a disagreement among the nation's appellate courts over what judges should do in these cases.
The case before the justices involved Carlos Concepcion, who is serving a 19-year sentence after he pleaded guilty to possessing at least five grams of crack cocaine with an intent to distribute.
But the length of Concepcion's prison term really was determined by previous state court convictions that made him a career offender under federal law.
In 2019, Concepcion asked for a reduced sentence under the First Step Act that President Donald Trump signed into law a year earlier. Concepcion argued that the law made him eligible for a shorter term, but he also pointed to his earlier convictions, one of which had been thrown out and others of which were no longer considered violent crimes under intervening Supreme Court decisions.
Still, the judge refused to consider changes to his sentence.