Circuit Split Alerter

What is required to show that a Rule 11(b)(3) error affected a defendant’s substantial rights on plain-error review when the factual basis for a guilty plea is challenged?

Whether non-mandatory “Standard Conditions” of federal supervised release must be orally pronounced in the defendant’s presence at sentencing (or specifically incorporated by reference) or may instead be imposed for the first time in the written judgment.

Whether § 922(g)(1) remains constitutional after N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen and, specifically, whether courts must conduct a felony-by-felony historical-tradition analysis or may uphold the statute categorically for all felonies.

Whether a union must present objective evidence of relevance at the time it requests information about non-unit employees from an employer, or may the General Counsel establish relevance later at an unfair-labor-practice hearing.

Whether a defendant’s non-Indian status under 18 U.S.C. § 1152 is an element the Government must plead and prove beyond a reasonable doubt or an affirmative defense the defendant must raise.

Whether a successive habeas applicant asserting an Atkins intellectual-disability claim based on newly available scientific evidence satisfies 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(2)(A) by presenting a “new rule of constitutional law,” or whether such a claim is governed instead by § 2244(b)(2)(B)’s new-facts standard.

Whether Boykin v. Alabama requires the record to show an affirmative, specific waiver of each of the three enumerated trial rights (jury trial, confrontation, and privilege against self-incrimination) before a guilty plea may be deemed knowing and voluntary, or whether a showing of the defendant’s general awareness that he is waiving a trial and its attendant rights is sufficient.

Whether a hotel guest retains a reasonable expectation of privacy in a room for a short 'grace period' after the posted checkout time when the hotel’s practices may tolerate late departure.

Whether moving victims at gunpoint during a robbery constitutes being "physically restrained" for purposes of the two-level enhancement in U.S.S.G. § 2B3.1(b)(4)(B).

Whether the MDLEA’s ‘vessel subject to the jurisdiction of the United States’ requirement is an element affecting subject-matter jurisdiction (thus going to the court’s power) or a non-jurisdictional question of law for the judge.

Whether a presumption of prejudice applies when jurors are exposed to extraneous information and, if so, which party bears the burden of proving harmlessness or actual partiality.

Whether a state may constitutionally ban the open carriage of handguns while still issuing shall-issue concealed-carry licenses without violating the Second Amendment after N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen.

Whether the dormant Commerce Clause applies to state residency or preference requirements in the licensing of marijuana businesses when marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

Whether the dormant Commerce Clause applies to state cannabis-licensing residency requirements even though marijuana remains illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act.

Whether a federal court retains authority to modify a criminal sentence after the President has commuted that sentence, or whether any further judicial modification is barred (thereby mooting the prisoner’s appeal).