Indeed, Justice Scalia was the court's greatest champion for the rule of lenity, and I especially missed his voice here.
|
|
So, as one example, he may not follow the rule of lenity — and side with defendants when criminal law is vague — like Scalia did.
|
|
It would be nice to see the court be more explicit about its concerns and use the rule of lenity as a home for them.
|
|
Ordinarily, the justices apply a "rule of lenity"—a benefit of the doubt to the defendant—in cases where a law could plausibly be read two ways.
|
|
Is it OK for a President to "place his thumb on the scale in favor of lenity" to protect himself or his associates against potential criminal charges?
|
|
But I suspect that he would have gone further, suggesting that the statute is irredeemably vague or setting forth an even stricter, lenity-based construction than the court's.
|
|
Scalia quite consistently resorted to the "rule of lenity," which essentially says courts must side with the defendant when a law is vague about how someone should be punished.
|
|
Their bait and switch between rage and lenity was showcased early on, with moments on Opiate like in its title track, which has Keenan seesawing between soft cooing and screaming.
|
|
" She concluded: "Given this ambiguity concerning the breadth of the provision and the documents to which it was intended to apply, the rule of lenity requires the dismissal of the count.
|
|
They said the Supreme Court should instead apply the rule of lenity, which dictates that when a criminal law is ambiguous, the defendant charged with a crime should receive the lightest punishment.
|
|
If I had a wish, it would have been for the court to add to its opiniona more explicit discussion of the "rule of lenity," which calls for criminal statutes to be narrowly construed.
|
|
"Since the Court can read the language either way, this points in the direction of the 'rule of lenity,'" Jackson wrote in a 57-page ruling on the defense's motion to dismiss the charges.
|
|
These glimmers of scepticism about the reach of Chevron—and hints that the justices may employ the "rule of lenity" to give the benefit of the doubt to the defendant—suggest that Mr Esquivel-Quintana has a chance of avoiding deportation.
|
|
In general, the principal of "lenity" — which requires doubts to be resolved in close cases against prosecution — applies even more strictly when the decision to indict would effectively deny the public the right to exercise its judgment about who should be the president.
|
|
"One is that it derives from a common law 'good faith' defense; another is that it compensates for an earlier putative mistake in broadening the statute; the third is that it provides 'fair warning' to government officials, akin to the rule of lenity," he wrote.
|
|
The court concludes that the rule of lenity requires a restrained, narrow interpretation of the statue. Extending the CFAA to cover private employee misconduct is the role of the legislature, not the judiciary.
|
|
Justice Souter wrote a dissent, in which Justices Ginsburg and Stevens joined. Souter wrote that the text of ACCA was ambiguous, and in such cases the traditional rule of construction was to apply lenity in criminal statutes.
|
|
As of 929, Wang Chuhui was serving as the deputy chief of staff (中門副使, Zhongmen Fushi) under Meng Zhixiang the Later Tang-commissioned military governor (Jiedushi) of Xichuan Circuit (西川, headquartered in modern Chengdu, Sichuan). That year, there was an occasion when a younger brother of the officer Meng Rong (), who was serving as a tax collector, had embezzled from the tax funds and was sentenced to death. On account of Meng Rong, Wang and Meng Zhixiang's secretary Feng Qu () sought lenity for Meng Rong's brother. Meng Zhixiang refused, stating that even if the guilty were his own brother, he would not have shown lenity.
|
|
Because we find that the > district court's construction of the CFAA violates the rule of lenity, we > reverse the judgment of conviction on the CFAA count. Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman wrote in an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune that there is a "high probability" of the appeal continuing to U.S. Supreme Court.
|
|
In criminal law, the rule of lenity holds that where a criminal statute is ambiguous, the meaning most favorable to the defendant—i.e., the one that imposes the lowest penalties—should be adopted. In the US context, Justice John Marshall stated the rule thus in United States v. Wiltberger: > The rule that penal laws are to be construed strictly, is perhaps not much > less old than construction itself.
|
|
The rule of lenity, also called the rule of strict construction, is a principle of criminal statutory interpretation that requires a court to apply any unclear or ambiguous law in the manner that is most favorable to the defendant. The rule has a long history in the law and has been an important element of the relationship between the courts and the legislature, but its role in modern jurisprudence is less clear.
|
|
For instance, statutes often contain "definition" sections, which attempt to make plain how the statute should be read. The courts have developed "canons of construction", rules which are intended to guide the manner in which a statute is to be applied. The rule of lenity is one such canon. Implicit in its provisions is the additional burden placed on the prosecution in a criminal case and the protection of individual rights against the powers of the state.
|
|
On October 17, 2018, the Arkansas Court of Appeals issued a ruling that clarified that the mere carrying of a handgun is not a crime by itself absent a purpose to attempt to unlawfully employ the handgun as a weapon against a person, and any ambiguity would be found in favor of the defendant per the rule of lenity. This effectively ends the dispute on the legality of permitless carry in Arkansas and allows for the unlicensed open carry and concealed carry of a weapon.
|
|
Knowles had been repeatedly warned by Commodore Warren to "shew what Lenity you can...to the people of those Colonys" and "to give them no room for complaints." Nevertheless, on the evening of 16 November 1747, and into the next morning, Knowles's press-gangs captured some 46 men, treating them roughly and ignoring their protests that they were Massachusetts residents.Brunsman (2007), pp. 351–354. Not all were on inbound ships, and some were not even seamen, but carpenters and laborers on their way to work.
|
|
The page of the Egidio Bossi's treatise with the words ″in dubio pro reo″ on it. The principle of in dubio pro reo (Latin for "[when] in doubt, for the accused") means that a defendant may not be convicted by the court when doubts about his or her guilt remain. The rule of lenity is the doctrine that ambiguity should be resolved in favor of the more lenient punishment. To resolve all doubts in favor of the accused is in consonance with the principle of presumption of innocence.
|
|
The court ruled in Thompson Center Arms' favor in that the carbine conversion kit did not constitute a short-barreled rifle, primarily because the kit contained both the stock and the 16-inch barrel. Justice Scalia also noted that there is a warning carved on the stock telling the user to not attach the stock to the receiver when the 10-inch barrel is attached to the receiver or vice versa. This circumstance caused the court to apply the rule of lenity since the NFA carries criminal penalties with it. This meant that ambiguous statutes are interpreted against the government.
|
|
In re Lowry, 32 F.3d 1579 (Fed. Cir. 1994) was a 1994 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on the patent eligibility of data structures. The decision, which reversed a PTO rejection of data structure claims, was followed by a significant change in PTO policy as to granting software related patents, a cessation of PTO appeals to the Supreme Court from reversals of PTO rejections of software patent applications, an increasing lenity at the Federal Circuit toward such patents and patent applications, and a great increase in the number of software patents issued by the PTO.
|
|
Owing to the delay in his trial, an attempt was made to force Moore's release under the writ of habeas corpus. However, this was unsuccessful. Moore was subsequently sentenced to transportation. According to contemporary accounts, the "lenity" of Lord Cornwallis to Moore "and other rebels, gave considerable offence to the violent loyalists".id=w_ABAAAAMAAJ&pg;=PA93&lpg;=PA93&dq;=humbert+%22for+the+province+of+connaught%22&source;=web&ots;=7R7oCCg9vB&sig;=KF6yhlI3JNbFfCvdO_7OKR8-njo#PPP7,M1 R.R. Madden, The United Irishmen, Their Lives and Times, 1846 While being taken to Duncannon Fort in Wexford, en route to New Geneva, he died in the Royal Oak Coaching Inn, Broad Street, Waterford City.
|
|
His anger against Fesch was such that he stopped the sum of 150,000 florins which had been accorded to him. The disasters of the years 1812-1813 brought Napoleon to treat Pius VII with more lenity and the position of Fesch thus became for a time less difficult. On the first abdication of Napoleon (11 April 1814) and the restoration of the Bourbons, he, however, retired to Rome where he received a welcome. The events of the Hundred Days (March–June 1815) brought him back to France; he resumed his archiepiscopal duties at Lyon and was further named a member of the senate and a peer of France.
|
|
His second letter was accompanied by a chalice of gold surrounded with precious stones, a patina of gold, a chalice of silver, and two veils of silk, which he presented to the Roman church. In order to make the peace general, he advised the pope not to be too rigorous in exacting the extrusion of the names of former bishops from diptychs. His excuse for the bishops of Pontus, Asia, and the East is composed in very beautiful language. The answers of Hormisdas are given in the Acts of the Council of Constantinople held under Mennas, in which he states his trust in the prudence and experience of Epiphanius, and recommends lenity towards the returning, severity to the obdurate.
|
|
On February 26, 2020, the Supreme Court released an opinion affirming the decision by the 11th Circuit and ruling against Shular. Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that, unlike in the other provisions referenced by Shular that involve the categorical approach, the provision in question relating to "serious drug offenses" used the term 'involving'—which should be interpreted to mean that "serious drug offenses" includes any crime that 'involves' the enumerated acts (distribution, manufacture, and possession of drugs). The opinion also noted that the rule of lenity, which would ordinarily require the court to interpret ambiguous phrases in a law in the manner most favorable to the defendant, was not applicable here since the terms being used were not genuinely ambiguous.
|
|
Hume passes on an oral tradition about John Milton and the playwright William Davenant: "It is not strange, that Milton received no encouragement after the restoration: It is more to be admired, that he escaped with his life" (for eloquently justifying the regicide). "Many of the cavaliers blamed extremely that lenity towards him, which was so honourable in the king, and so advantageous to posterity. It is said, that he had saved Davenant's life during the protectorship; and Davenant in return afforded him like protection after the restoration; being sensible, that men of letters ought always to regard their sympathy of taste as a more powerful band of union, than any difference of party or opinion as a source of animosity".
|
|
However, The Ninth Circuit applied the rule of lenity to the term "authorization" and found that the Seventh's Circuit interpretation could criminalize a large swath of the population by looking to the subjective intent of the employee or the subsequent use of the information accessed. Instead, the Brekka Court held that "a person uses a computer 'without authorization' under §§ 1030(a)(2) and (4) when the person has not received permission to use the computer for any purpose (such as when a hacker accesses someone's computer without any permission), or when the employer has rescinded permission to access the computer and the defendant uses the computer anyway." Since Brekka, courts in the Ninth Circuit have generally foreclosed an employer's Computer Fraud and Abuse Act claim against former employees, unless the employees' access was conducted post-termination.
|
|
This tax, though equally impolitic in its institution and > oppressive in the mode of exacting it, was authorised by the antient and > general usage of the country. It had not the sanction of Government, but > took place as a matter of course. ... The tax not being levied by any fixed > rate or standard fell heaviest upon the wretched survivors of those villages > which had suffered the greatest depopulation, and were of course the most > entitled to the lenity of Government. It had also this additional evil > attending it in common with every other variation from the regular practice: > that it afforded an opportunity to the farmers and shicdars, to levy other > contributions on the people under color of it, and even to encrease this to > whatever magnitude they pleased, since they were in course the judges of the > loss sustained and of the proportion which the inhabitants were to pay to > replace it.
|
|
The eighth miniature marks the beginning of the penitential Psalms; and the last 6, depicting Moses, Jonah, Hannah, Ezekiel and Hezekiah, introduce and illustrate the Canticles of the Old Testament. The subject of the miniatures is as follows: Moses Parting the Red Sea, fol.419v. 1v: David playing the harp with Melodia (μελωδία) seated beside him; 2v: David kills the lion assisted by Strength (ἰσχύς); 3v: The anointing of David by Samuel, with Lenity (πραότης) observing; 4v: David, accompanied by Power (δύναμις) slays Goliath, as Arrogance (ἀλαζόνεια) flees; 5v: Triumphant Return of David to Jerusalem; 6v: Coronation of David by Saul; 7v: David Stands with a psalter open to Psalm 71, flanked by Wisdom (σοφία) and Prophecy (προφητεία); 136v: Nathan Rebukes David concerning Bathsheba; the Penitence of David with Repentance (μετάνοια); 419v: Moses parting the Red Sea, with personifications of the desert, night, the abyss, and the Red Sea; 422v: Moses Receives the Tablets of the Law; 428v: Hannah thanks God for the birth of Samuel; 431v: Scenes from Jonah; 435v: Isaiah with Night (νύξ) and Dawn (ὄρθρος); 446v: King Hezekiah. Jean Porcher has assigned the full-page illuminations to five artists, or hands, attributing 6 miniatures to the lead artist, Hand A.
|
|