The Wall Street Journal - USA (2020-12-03)

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. ** Thursday, December 3, 2020 |A

U.S. NEWS

Amid Dwindling Ridership, D.C. Metro Weighs Drastic Service Cuts

CRISIS: The Metro Center station in Washington, D.C., was nearly empty during rush hour Wednesday. Facing a $494.5 million deficit as the pandemic keeps passengers away, Metro is proposing to end weekend service, close 19 stations and eliminate 2,400 positions.

CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

lier this year that several agencies within DHS were buying access to a product made by a commercial broker, a company called Venntel Inc., of Herndon, Va., that con- tained location information on millions of U.S. mobile devices, drawn from games, weather apps and other common mobile applications. The department also buys software from Babel Street, another vendor that sells location-data products, according to public records. Venntel and Babel Street didn’t respond to requests for comment. Such data is widely used by the U.S. military and intelligence agencies for intelligence gathering overseas, according to public records and people familiar with the matter, but those agencies are largely barred from domestic moni- toring. However, law-enforcement agencies have concluded that they don’t need a warrant to obtain location data on phones within the U.S. because con- sumers technically can opt out of such location tracking and the data is available for purchase on the open market. The Treasury Department’s inspector general is probing the Internal Revenue Service’s use of the same data for criminal enforcement.

WASHINGTON—The Depart- ment of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog said it would open an investigation into the use of mobile-phone surveil- lance technologies to track Americans without a warrant, the latest salvo in a debate within the U.S. government over the legality of such techniques. The department’s inspector general told five Democratic senators that his office would initiate an audit “to determine if the Department of Home- land Security (DHS) and its components have developed, updated, and adhered to poli- cies related to cell-phone sur- veillance devices,” according to a letter sent last week to Capitol Hill and shared with The Wall Street Journal. The letter came in response to a request in October from Sens. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio), Ed Markey (D., Mass.) and Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii) to probe whether the purchase of commercial cellphone data on Americans for law-enforcement purposes was lawful. “DHS always has and will continue to cooperate fully with OIG [Office of Inspector General] investigations,” said a spokesman for the department. The Journal reported ear-

BYBYRONTAU

DHS’s Use of Phone

Data Will Be Probed

retroactively to other cases, the court asks whether it is simply enforcing an old rule or establishing a new one. Old rules apply to prior cases, but new ones do only if they in- volve “bedrock” principles es- sential to the accuracy and fairness of trials. “You have something of a burden of establishing that the unanimous jury is necessary to avoid an impermissibly large risk of an inaccurate convic- tion,” Chief Justice John Rob-

erts told Andre Belanger, the Baton Rouge, La., lawyer argu- ing for retroactivity. The chief justice cited a 1968 case that declined to apply retroactively a then-recent ruling that defendants were entitled to a jury trial, rather than appearing only before a judge, for serious crimes. Justice Clarence Thomas noted that in 1972 the court had declined to say the Sixth Amendment forbids convictions without a unanimous jury. Until they specifically were repudiated in April, such

convictions sat “comfortably if not awkwardly with our case law,” he said. The 1972 case, however, came from a splintered court; only one justice signed what was viewed as its controlling opinion. Mr. Belanger said such a precedent should not be held “to stand for...a wa- tered-down Bill of Rights.” Mr. Belanger argued that the April decision, Ramos v. Louisiana, should be viewed as a landmark in constitutional law, akin to Gideon v. Wain- wright, the 1963 opinion requiring the government to provide a defense attorney for indigent defendants charged with serious crimes. Justice Samuel Alito coun- tered that, unlike the 1963 decision, Justice Gorsuch’s Ra- mos opinion relied on what he believed was the framers’ un- derstanding of the jury right in 1791, when the Bill of Rights was ratified. The Ramos decision itself divided the court. Conserva- tives and liberals formed the majority through differently reasoned opinions, while Jus- tice Alito dissented, joined in whole or most part by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice El- ena Kagan. Justice Breyer had concerns over the practical effect of retroactivity. “Can the Louisiana system handle that?” he asked, after Mr. Belanger said

at most 1,600 cases in the state could be affected. “Oh yes, sir,” Mr. Belanger said. “We’re really looking at our estimates of maybe two to three cases per prosecutor,” he said. The Louisiana solicitor general, Elizabeth Murrill, dis- agreed. “It doesn’t just affect those that were nonunanimous jury verdicts. It also has been raised as a claim to undermine and attack plea agreements, and those are even larger in number,” she told the court. Even accepting Mr. Belanger’s estimates, “[we] think 1,600 is an awfully lot of new trials.” “What relevance does this have anyway?” said Justice Gorsuch. “If this really were a significant change and an important one, wouldn’t we ex- pect there to be some burden for the state?” Wednesdays’ case was brought by Thedrick Edwards, who was 19 and had no criminal record when arrested by Baton Rouge police in connec- tion with several attacks near Louisiana State University in May 2006. He was convicted in Decem- ber 2007—on some counts by 10-2 votes, and others by 11-1—of armed robbery, kid- napping and rape He is serving a life sentence without parole at Louisiana’s Angola state penitentiary.

WASHINGTON—The Su- preme Court on Wednesday weighed whether its decision this year requiring juries to be unanimous to convict someone of a crime should be applied retroactively. If a majority of the justices say yes, hundreds or thousands of convictions could be overturned. In Louisiana, Oregon and Puerto Rico, criminal defendants could be convicted even if the jury wasn’t unanimous until the Supreme Court ruled the practice unconstitutional in April. Wednesday’s argument in- volved fundamental questions regarding the origin and appli- cation of constitutional rights, putting on display the differ- ent concerns among individual justices—even those some- times considered ideological bedfellows. Justice Brett Kavanaugh spoke of the court system’s prejudices against African- Americans. Justice Stephen Breyer worried about forcing authorities to retry or release hundreds of inmates; Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote April’s plurality opinion, sug- gested that concern was irrel- evant. When considering whether a decision on the rights of criminal defendants applies

BYJESSBRAVIN

Supreme Court Weighs Making

Jury-Case Decision Retroactive

Hundreds or thousands of convictions could be overturned.

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The Wall Street Journal - USA (2020-12-03)

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