Intriguing (mostly procedural) criminal justice issues up for SCOTUS arguments as 2019 winds down

The US Supreme Court begins its December sitting on Monday morning, and a handful of cases scheduled for oral arguments over the next two weeks ought to be of interest to criminal justice fans.  Here are the ones that I will be watching (with links and descriptions via SCOTUSblog):

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York, New York, No. 18-280 [Arg: 12.2.2019]

Issue(s): Whether New York City’s ban on transporting a licensed, locked and unloaded handgun to a home or shooting range outside city limits is consistent with the Second Amendment, the commerce clause and the constitutional right to travel.

Banister v. Davis, No. 18-6943 [Arg: 12.4.2019]

Issue(s): Whether and under what circumstances a timely Rule 59(e) motion should be recharacterized as a second or successive habeas petition under Gonzalez v. Crosby.

Guerrero-Lasprilla v. Barr, No. 18-776 [Arg: 12.9.2019]

Issue(s): Whether a request for equitable tolling, as it applies to statutory motions to reopen, is judicially reviewable as a “question of law.”

Holguin-Hernandez v. U.S., No. 18-7739 [Arg: 12.10.2019]

Issue(s): Whether a formal objection after pronouncement of sentence is necessary to invoke appellate reasonableness review of the length of a defendant’s sentence.

McKinney v. Arizona, No. 18-1109 [Arg: 12.11.2019]

Issue(s): (1) Whether the Arizona Supreme Court was required to apply current law when weighing mitigating and aggravating evidence to determine whether a death sentence is warranted; and (2) whether the correction of error under Eddings v. Oklahoma requires resentencing.

For the usual reasons, the Second Amendment/gun control case out of New York and the Eighth Amendment/death penalty case out of Arizona seem likely to get the most attention among this bunch.  But, ever the federal sentencing nerd, I am especially interested to see if the Holguin-Hernandez argument might hint at the case being a possible sleeper.  Remarkably, the Justices have not said much of anything about reasonableness review of sentences in over eight years(!) since its March 2011 ruling in Pepper v. US.  And the Justices have not really said anything really important about reasonableness review in a dozen years since the 2007 trio of opinions in Rita, Gall and Kimbrough.  I am not really expecting much from Holguin-Hernandez, but even a the prospect of a thimble of jurisprudential water can be exciting in a reasonableness desert.

Via Law http://www.rssmix.com/