Professor Joel Johnson, "Cert Alert: Supreme Court Cases of Interest" Spring 2026 -- ABA Criminal Justice Magazine

Professor Joel S. Johnson's latest installment of his quarterly column, "Cert Alert: Supreme Court Cases of Interest," has been published in the Spring 2026 edition of the ABA Criminal Justice Magazine. The column discusses pending criminal cases before the Supreme Court.

From Supreme Court Cases of Interest:

The Supreme Court’s Term is in full swing, with the criminal docket already yielding several decisions—Case v. Montana, Barrett v. United States, Ellingburg v. United States, and Bowe v. United States. None of these is a blockbuster. But each provides helpful clarification of an issue on the boundaries of criminal law and procedure.

In Case v. Montana, the Court clarified the standard for the “emergency-aid” exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Kagan held that, under the Court’s prior decision in Brigham City v. Stuart, police officers may enter a home without a warrant when they have an “objectively reasonable basis” to believe an occupant is seriously injured or imminently threatened with harm. The case arose after Montana police entered the home of William Case following reports of a suicide threat. The Court rejected Case’s argument for a higher probable-cause standard and the lower court’s reasonable-suspicion approach, reaffirming the more flexible objective reasonableness test from Brigham City. While the decision was unanimous, two justices wrote separate concurring opinions. Justice Sotomayor emphasized that the objective-reasonableness inquiry should be applied with particular rigor in the context of mental health, noting a risk that police entry may sometimes escalate the situation. Justice Gorsuch reiterated his preference for grounding Fourth Amendment doctrine in property principles recognized at common law, suggesting that historical practice provides a more stable guide than an intuition-based reasonableness standard.

The Court took a firm stance on statutory construction and cumulative punishment in Barrett v. United States. At issue was whether a single act could support separate convictions and sentences under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) (using a firearm during a crime of violence) and 18 U.S.C. § 924(j) (causing death with a firearm during a violation of subsection (c)). In an opinion by Justice Jackson, the Court reversed the Second Circuit, holding that such an act may support only one conviction. Applying what it called “the Blockburger presumption”—which presumes that Congress does not intend to punish the same offense twice absent a clear statement otherwise—the Court found no “crystal clear” intent to authorize multiple punishments for these overlapping provisions. The result was unsurprising given that the government had confessed error in the lower court. Indeed, the Court had to appoint an amicus curiae to defend the judgment below, only to reject amicus’s defense of cumulative sentencing. Justice Gorsuch concurred in part, arguing that the case should have been decided on a constitutional ground—that the Double Jeopardy Clause bars multiple convictions for the same offense—rather than on the statutory ground the majority favored.

The complete article may be found at American Bar Association