Cert granted in Davis and Hammon

The Supreme Court today granted certiorari in both Davis v. Washington, No. 05-5224, and Hammon v. Indiana, No. 05-5705. Davis primarily involves accusatory statements made in a 911 call, while Hammon involves accusatory statements made to a responding officer. In each case the state supreme court held that the statements at issue were not testimonial, and in each case I believe this was erroneous. Jeff Fisher, who won Crawford, represents Davis, and I represent Hammon. The arguments will be in tandem, probably in March. The cases give the Supreme Court a chance to ensure that Crawford will be properly applied throughout the nation. Given my involvement in one of the cases, I will be abstemious in comments on the blog. But in case anybody is in doubt, I'm pretty excited.

Waiting for the Supreme Court; National Law Journal article on pending cert petitions

The Supreme Court will have the cert petitions in Hammon v. Indiana and Davis v. Washington before it at its conference on Friday; my understanding is that it will probably announce its decisions whether to take the cases on Monday. Meanwhile, here is a link to a helpful article in the National Law Journal discussing these two cases and the split among jurisdictions in treating fresh accusations made to governmental agents.

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1129898335844

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