Criminal Appeal

Dear Court Reporters (or should I say, "DEAR COURT REPORTERS")

Dear Court Reporters,

Having finished reading another all-capitalized reporter's transcript it's time to again implore you to remember that the proper use of capitalization is not simply a matter of style, but it is more a convention designed to assist the reader and prevent headaches. Capitalization helps the reader find the beginning of the sentence. Lower case letters are easier to discriminate from each other.

So no more all-caps, please.

Sincerely,

A tired reader.

P.S. This applies to brief writers too. As the Seventh Circuit reminds us, "Underlined, all-caps, boldface text is almost illegible."

AG Promulgates AEDPA Opt-In Regs

The U.S. Attorney General has promulgated regulations governing opt-in procedures for states seeking fast-track consideration of capital federal habeas cases under AEDPA.  As reported by the CJLF, the determinations of whether states qualified for fast track proceedings used to be made by the courts, but the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 gave the rule-making and certification-of-states authority to the U.S. AG.

The states can now begin to ask the AG for certification. Of course, there will be a new AG hearing those applications for certification.