Plead the Fifth (Cir.)
Plead the Fifth is a platform for attorneys to talk about the jurisprudence of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. In each episode, we pick several newly issued cases from the docket, and we invite experienced appellate attorneys to discuss the significance of those cases. Our discussions focus on issues that relate to civil rights and the criminal justice reform.
Episodes
10 episodes
State Rights in Criminal Prosecution? Perhaps.
In this episode, we discussed a recent case U.S. v. Seekins, in which the federal public defender attempted to push the Fifth Circuit to revisit the scope of interstate commerce in the criminal justice context. By a close vote (7-9), the Fifth ...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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30:28
"Oops.", says Justice Willett.
In Shepperd v. United States, an attorney represented his client, the criminal defendant, and also the government's key witness at the same time. Two weeks before trial, this conflict of interest was finally made known to the defendant, who imm...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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38:03
"May I search your phone, with good faith?"
Can a police officer search a criminal suspect's cell phone in full, when the only charge in the warrant was drug possession, and the affidavit provided barebone justification? This is the question the Fifth Circuit was presented in U.S. v. Mor...
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38:34
"Do I need to listen to the Supreme Court?" The Fifth Circuit Has Doubts.
When the U.S. Supreme Court remands a case back to a circuit court, how much room does the circuit court have to "play around"? The Fifth Circuit's response is "a lot". The U.S. Supreme Court remanded the SB8 case back to the Fift...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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28:45
A Retirement and A Resignation
In this episode, we talked about Justice Breyer's retirement and Justice Gregg Costa's unexpected resignation from the Fifth Circuit. Justice Breyer's retirement announcement proposes an opportunity to the Biden administration and the replaceme...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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29:47
COVID-19 is not that big of a deal, according to the Fifth Circuit
On November 5, 2021, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS), which required employers who have more than 100 employees to mandate vaccination for their employees. A variety of plain...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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37:10
Abortion, Standing, and the "Audition" for the Supreme Court
In this episode, we talked about the Fifth Circuit's rulings on Texas's controversial legislation, the SB8. SB8 makes every woman who seeks abortion "sui-able" by any private citizen for damages over 10,000, and attorneys' fees. The Fifth Circu...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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42:00
A Constitutional Crisis, or a Classic Lawyer's Drama?
Several attorneys filed lawsuits against the State Bar of Texas and the State Bar of Louisiana, alleging that some bar activities are overly political and ideological, which violated their First Amendment rights. The challenged bar activi...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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52:56
The Federal Sentencing Guideline: a Non-Mandatory Dilemma
In this episode, we are going to review five recent Fifth Circuit Cases regarding the federal sentencing guideline. These cases address issues that frequently occur at the sentencing phase and at appeals, such as relevant conduct, plain error r...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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1:07:07
Big changes in FLSA, and another sad story about the death penalty
In this episode, we are going to cover six recently issued public opinions. Three of them are from the court's civil docket, and they are regarding the Court's new jurisprudence on employment and labor law and the federal civil procedu...
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Season 1
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Episode 1
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52:02