The Upside-Down Treatment of Religious Exceptions Cases in the Supreme Court

MICHAEL C. DORF

Cornell law professor Michael C. Dorf comments on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week to reject an emergency application from the State of Alabama to lift a stay on the execution of Willie B. Smith III. Professor Dorf observes the Court’s unusual alignment of votes in the decision and argues that, particularly as reflected by the recent COVID-19 decisions, the liberal and conservative Justices have essentially swapped places from the seminal 1990 case Employment Division v. Smith, which established that the First Amendment does not guarantee a right to exceptions from neutral laws of general applicability.

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Commonwealth v. Pearson

Docket: SJC-12930

Opinion Date: February 12, 2021

Judge: Budd

Areas of Law: Criminal Law

The Supreme Judicial Court vacated some of Defendant's convictions, holding that the case must be remanded for an evidentiary hearing as to Defendant's motion to suppress and a determination as to whether the first prong of the independent source exception to the exclusionary rule applied. Following two separate jury trials in the Superior Court in Norfolk County and Middlesex County Defendant was convicted of multiple offenses stemming from a burglary spree. Before trial, Defendant moved to suppress evidence seized from his residence during the execution of a search warrant, asserting that the warrant was tainted by discoveries made during an earlier unlawful entry of his residence. The motion judges agreed that the initial entry was unauthorized but that, pursuant to the independent source rule, the evidence was exempt from exclusion as "fruit of the poisonous tree." The Supreme Judicial Court vacated Defendant's Middlesex convictions with the exception of his conviction for intimidation of a witness, holding that because the matter of whether the evidence demonstrated that the detective would not have sought the warrant had the officers not made the initial illegal entry, the matter must be remanded for an evidentiary hearing.