Cases

In Douglas v. California, 372 U.S. 353 (1963), the Supreme Court held that an indigent defendant was entitled to have counsel appointed to handle the appeal of his conviction.

In Apodaca v. Oregon, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed the question of whether the Sixth Amendment’s right to a jury trial required a unanimous verdict.

This case was designed to protect the Sixth Amendment right to a ‘‘speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury’’ and the right inherent in the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to have every element of a criminal offense proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Aptheker is an important civil liberties case involving the right to travel. In Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U.S. 500, 84 S.Ct. 1659 (1964), the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal law that the Court believed unconstitutionally interfered with the freedom of American citizens to travel abroad.

Arizona v. Fulminante considered whether a state court properly found a defendant’s confession was coerced in violation of the Fifth Amendment and whether admission of a coerced confession is properly evaluated using harmless error analysis.

In Hicks, the Supreme Court announced that probable cause is required to justify the search or seizure of items discovered in ‘‘plain view’’ during an unrelated search. Police entered an apartment after shots were fired through its floor, injuring a man in the apartment below.

In Youngblood, a divided Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause does not require the government to preserve evidence that could conclusively prove the defendant innocent.

Congress passed the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 that, among other things, dealt with ‘‘virtual’’ pornographic images of minors.

The manager of an adult theater was charged in a state court with distributing obscene materials, a misdemeanor. Pursuant to state law, and over his claim that the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial required a jury of at least six members, he was tried and convicted by a jury of five people.

MauriceM, after being hospitalized at age threemonths with fresh and partially healed bone fractures, was placed into shelter care by a court order but was later returned to his mother Jacqueline’s custody.

Barclay was convicted of first-degree murder for his participation in the politically and racially motivated murder of a hitchhiker.

Many capital punishment statutes permit jurors to consider evidence of a convicted capital murderer’s ‘‘future dangerousness.’’

In 1954, Lloyd Barenblatt was subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), which was investigating communist activities and organizations.

Nude dancing as an issue in earlier cases occurred in the context of alcohol regulations, such as California v. LaRue (1972), or zoning laws as in Schad v. Mt. Ephraim (1981).

Barron v. Baltimore was an appeal to the Supreme Court from the Court of Appeals of Maryland, upon a writ of error through Section 25 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, on the grounds that a state action had violated the U.S. Constitution.