High Court Rejects Torture Rendition Case

The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a Canadian engineer who was caught up in the U.S. government's secret transfer of terror suspects to other countries.

The court did not comment Monday in ending Syrian-born Maher Arar's quest to sue top U.S. officials, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft when it denied certiorari in the case.

Arar was mistaken for a terrorist when he was changing planes in New York on his way home to Canada, a year after the 2001 terrorist attacks. He was instead sent to Syria, where he claims he was tortured.

A Canadian investigation found that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police wrongly labeled Arar an Islamic fundamentalist and passed misleading and inaccurate information to U.S. authorities.

The inquiry determined that Arar was tortured, and it cleared him of any terrorist links or suspicions. The Canadian government later agreed to pay Arar $10 million and apologized to him for its role in the case.

Arar v. Ashcroft, 09-923, asserts the Bush administration's secret rendition program sent Arar to Syria to be tortured (which Syria has denied). Lower courts had dismissed Arar's lawsuit.

Court Sides With Immigrant in Drug Case

A single tablet of an anti-anxiety drug got Jose Angel Carachuri-Rosendo 10 days in jail in Texas and a quick deportation to his native Mexico.

Too quick, a unanimous Supreme Court said Monday, in a ruling that could affect thousands of legal immigrants who face deportation over minor criminal records.

The lone Xanax tablet that Carachuri-Rosendo had without a prescription was his second minor drug crime, a year after he received 20 days in jail for possessing less than two ounces of marijuana.

When the federal government began deportation proceedings, it said Carachuri-Rosendo could not appeal for leniency from an immigration judge because his second conviction amounted to a serious, or aggravated, felony.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans agreed with the government. The Obama administration argued in the Supreme Court that ruling was correct because Carachuri-Rosendo's second conviction could have been treated as a serious crime under federal law.

But Justice John Paul Stevens, who has announced his retirement from the bench, said the local prosecutor in Texas could have charged Carachuri-Rosendo with being a repeat offender, but did not. So he was not convicted of a crime that would make his deportation automatic, Stevens said.

"Carachuri-Rosendo, and others in his position, may now seek cancellation of removal and thereby avoid the harsh consequence of mandatory removal," Stevens wrote for the court. He noted that immigrants may still be deported in such instances, but said immigration judges have the discretion to allow people to remain in this country.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas agreed, but only in the judgment, in concurring opinions.

The case is Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder, 09-60 (pdf).

Alina Das, a supervising attorney with the immigrant rights clinic at the New York University law school, said Congress intended automatic deportation to apply to drug traffickers, not people convicted of simple possession crimes.

She said thousands of immigrants plead guilty to minor offenses, then find themselves facing deportation with no prospect for leniency.

Carachuri-Rosendo, in his early 30s, had been in the United States legally since he was 5. His common-law wife, four children, mother and two sisters all are U.S. citizens, Stevens said.

Also Decided:

The Supreme Court rejected a lower court ruling of a death row appeal case in which an attorney's purported negligence was deemed insufficient to stop an execution.

The lawyer for Florida inmate Albert Holland had missed a deadline to file paperwork in requesting a federal review of Holland's death sentence. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta said a defendant could only have his deadline extended if it could be proven that the lawyer showed "bad faith, dishonesty, divided loyalty, mental impairment, or so forth," instead of just being "grossly negligent."

The high court sent the decision back.

"In our view, this standard is too rigid," said Justice Stephen Breyer, writing the 7-2 judgment for the court. Justices Scalia and Thomas dissented.

Scalia said Congress did not give justices the ability to extend the appeals deadline. He also said in federal appeals, the client is responsible for his lawyer's actions.

"Thus, when a state habeas petitioner's appeal is filed too late because of attorney error, the petitioner is out of luck," Scalia said.

The case is Holland v. Florida, 09-5327 (pdf).

In Dolan v. United States (09-367), the Court affirmed 5-4 that a court could order restitution beyond a 90-day deadline, in certain circumstances.

The court also reversed and remanded, 9-0, the decision in Astrue v. Ratliff, 08-1322, in which the government had withheld portions of a plaintiff's award after Ruby Kills Ree successfully sued for benefits from the Social Security Administration.

The government determined that Ree owed a federal debt predating the judgment and sought an administrative offset of the attorney's fees she was due under the Equal Access to Justice Act. The decision turned on who was the "prevailing party" due the withheld amount - Ree or her attorney, who in this case was the respondent Catherine Ratliff.