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2011 decisions of the US supreme court

The Supreme Court of the United States handed down fourteen _per curiam _ opinions during its 2011 term, which began October 3, 2011 and concluded September 30, 2012.

Because per curiam decisions are issued from the Court as an institution, these opinions all lack the attribution of authorship or joining votes to specific justices. All justices on the Court at the time the decision was handed down are assumed to have participated and concurred unless otherwise noted.

Court membership

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Chief Justice: John Roberts

Associate Justices: Antonin Scalia , Anthony Kennedy , Clarence Thomas , Ruth Bader Ginsburg , Stephen Breyer , Samuel Alito , Sonia Sotomayor , Elena Kagan

Cavazos v. Smith

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565 U.S. 1
Decided October 31, 2011.
The Court reversed, for the third time, a judgment of the Ninth Circuit that had set aside the conviction of a woman for the death of her infant grandson attributed to shaken baby syndrome (SBS). The Court ruled that the Ninth Circuit's judgment, which had questioned the sufficiency of the expert testimony supporting SBS as the victim's cause of death, was contrary to the deferential standard of review established by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 for such petitions.

Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded.

Ginsburg filed a dissent , joined by Breyer and Sotomayor.

Smith's sentence was subsequently commuted by California Governor Jerry Brown to time served, releasing her after a decade in prison.

Further reading

• Rosenthal, Andrew (November 1, 2011), "Shaken Baby Syndrome" , _The New York Times _ (editorial)

KPMG LLP v. Cocchi

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565 U.S. 18
Decided November 7, 2011.
The Court vacated a Florida state court judgment refusing to compel arbitration in a lawsuit involving claims brought against auditor KPMG by investors who were defrauded by Bernie Madoff . The Court ruled that the state court erred in determining only that some, but not all, of the claims in the lawsuit were not subject to arbitration, because the Federal Arbitration Act does not permit courts to issue a blanket refusal to compel arbitration simply because some of the claims could be resolved by the court without arbitration.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District, vacated and remanded.

Bobby v. Dixon

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565 U.S. 23
Decided November 7, 2011.
The Court ruled that the Sixth Circuit erred in setting aside a murder conviction in Ohio state court, because although the defendant's initial confession was given without the warnings required by _Miranda v. Arizona _, his subsequent confession was voluntary and therefore admissible against him.

Sixth Circuit reversed and remanded.

Hardy v. Cross

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565 U.S. 65
Decided December 12, 2011.
The Court reversed the Seventh Circuit's setting aside of a state court criminal conviction for sexual assault, where the alleged victim had been declared an unavailable witness and her testimony from a previous mistrial was admitted. Because the state court's decision to admit the testimony was not an unreasonable application of the Court's Confrontation Clause jurisprudence, the Seventh Circuit's decision failed to give the state court the benefit of the doubt as required by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act .

Though she had testified willingly and was cross-examined at the first trial, which was declared a mistrial, the witness subsequently claimed to fear for her safety and went into hiding, failing to appear for the second trial. The prosecution made numerous and repeated attempts to locate her through her family and friends, and the state trial court, characterizing such efforts as "superhuman," consequently granted its motion to have her declared unavailable and her testimony from the first trial admitted. The defendant was convicted of one of the charges and after losing an appeal in state court, filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court.

The Seventh Circuit ruled that the prosecution had not made the requisite good faith effort to locate the witness, describing particular steps that had not been taken. The Court considered these efforts unlikely to have made a difference, and "the Sixth Amendment does not require the prosecution to exhaust every avenue of inquiry, no matter how unpromising."

Seventh Circuit reversed.

Perry v. Perez

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565 U.S. 388
Argued January 9, 2012.
Decided January 20, 2012.
The Court vacated and remanded a federal court's interim legislative redistricting in Texas, a state covered by section 5 of the Voting Rights Act for which preclearance of redistricting by the state is required. Due to a significant increase in the state's population recorded in the 2010 census , the state had to redistrict, but in the District Court's view, could not obtain preclearance of its proposed plan in time for the 2012 elections. The District Court accordingly drew an interim district map itself. The Supreme Court found that the District Court's map was not deferential enough to the state's plan and policies, altering it without regard to whether those particular elements of the state's plan were legally flawed or had a reasonable probability of failing preclearance.

Thomas filed an opinion concurring in the judgment , stating that he believed Texas could implement its redistricting plan regardless of its failure to obtain preclearance in time, because in his view, §5 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional.

District Court for the Western District of Texas vacated and remanded.

Ryburn v. Huff

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565 U.S. 469
Decided January 23, 2012.
The Court reversed the Ninth Circuit's judgment that police officers were not entitled to qualified immunity for entering a private home without a warrant, finding that their belief that violence was imminent, and that a warrantless entry was appropriate, was reasonable under the circumstances.

The police officers were questioning the mother of a student who had been rumored to be planning to shoot other students at school. The mother initially failed to answer the phone, hung up after she did, and after coming outside to speak to the officers, failed to ask them what the questioning was about, and immediately ran back inside when she was asked if there were any guns inside. Finding this behavior alarming, the officers followed her in. No guns were found, and the rumors about the student's intentions turned out to be false.

The family sued the police, alleging under 42 U.S.C.  § 1983 that their warrantless entry violated the Fourth Amendment . The District Court entered judgment for the officers, finding that their account of the incident was accurate and ruling that they were entitled to qualified immunity because they reasonably believed that violence was imminent. A divided panel of the Ninth Circuit reversed. Though it accepted the District Court's findings of fact, it instead found that the officers were objectively unreasonable in believing that anyone's safety was at risk, because in their view the mother merely exercised her legal right to end the questioning.

In reversing, the Court criticized the Ninth Circuit for basing its ruling upon a changed version of the facts, as well as for apparently assuming that lawful conduct could not give rise to a legitimate concern that viol

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